Empire State Building

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Empire State Building
Map
General information
Location350 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10118-0110
USA[1]
Height
Antenna spire449 m (1,472 ft)
Roof381 m (1,250 ft)
Technical details
Floor area254,000 m² rentable (2007)
2,768,591 sq. ft.
External: 0.8 ha (2 acres)[2]
Design and construction
Architect(s)Shreve, Lamb and Harmon
The Empire State Building in New York

The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in New York, NY. Its name is derived from the nickname for the state of New York. It stood as the world's tallest building for more than forty years, from its completion in 1931 until the construction of the World Trade Center North Tower in 1972, and is now once again the tallest building in New York after the destruction of the World Trade Center in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The Empire State Building has been named by the American Society of Civil Engineers as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. The building and its street floor interior are designated landmarks of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, and confirmed by the New York City Board of Estimate.[3] On June 24, 1986 it was designated as a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior.[4]

History

The present site of the Empire State Building was first developed as the John Thomson Farm in the late 18th century. The block was occupied by the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in the late 19th century, and was frequented by The Four Hundred, the social elite of New York.

The Empire State Building was designed by Gregory Johnson and his architectural firm Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, which produced the building drawings in just two weeks, possibly using its earlier design for the R.J. Reynolds Tower in Winston-Salem, North Carolina as a basis.[5] The general contractors were Starrett Brothers and Eken, and the project was financed by John J. Raskob. The construction company was chaired by Alfred E. Smith, a former Governor of New York.[2]

Excavation of the site began on January 22 1930, and construction on the building itself started on March 17. The project involved 3,400 workers, mostly immigrants from Europe, along with hundreds of Mohawk nation iron workers. According to official accounts, five workers died during the construction.[6]

A worker bolts beams during construction.

The construction was part of an intense competition in New York for the title of the world's tallest building. Two other projects fighting for the title, 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler Building, were still under construction when work began on the Empire State Building. Both would hold the title for less than a year, as the Empire State Building had surpassed them upon its completion, just 410 days after construction commenced. The building was officially opened on May 1 1931 in dramatic fashion, when United States President Herbert Hoover turned on the building's lights with the push of a button from Washington, D.C..

The building's opening coincided with the Great Depression in the United States, and as a result much of its office space went unrented. In its first year of operation, the observation deck took in over a million dollars, as much as its owners made in rent that year. The lack of renters led New Yorkers to deride the building as the "Empty State Building.”[7] The building would not become profitable until 1950.[8]

The building's distinctive art deco spire was originally designed to be a mooring mast and depot for dirigibles. The 102nd floor was originally a landing platform with a dirigible gangplank. One elevator, traveling between the 86th and 102nd floors, was supposed to transport passengers after they checked in at the observation deck on the 86th floor.[2] However, the idea proved to be impractical and dangerous after a few attempts with airships, due to the powerful updrafts caused by the size of the building itself. The T-shaped mooring devices remain in place, and a large broadcast antenna was added to the top of the spire in 1952.

At 9:49 a.m. on Saturday July 28 1945, a B-25 Mitchell bomber, piloted by Lieutenant Colonel William F. Smith who was flying in a thick fog, accidentally crashed into the north side of the Empire State Building between the 79th and 80th floors, where the offices of the National Catholic Welfare Council were located. One engine shot through the side opposite the impact and another plummeted down an elevator shaft. The fire was extinguished in 40 minutes. Fourteen people were killed in the incident.[9] Elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver survived a plunge of 75 stories inside an elevator, which still stands as the Guinness World Record for the longest survived elevator fall recorded.[10] Despite the damage and loss of life, the building was open for business on many floors on the following Monday.

The Empire State Building remained the tallest skyscraper in the world for a record 41 years, and stood as the world's tallest man-made structure for 23 years. It was surpassed by the North Tower of the World Trade Center in 1972, and the Sears Tower shortly afterwards. With the destruction of the World Trade Center by terrorists in the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Empire State Building again became the tallest building in New York City, and the second-tallest building in the United States.

Over the years, more than thirty people have committed suicide from atop the building.[11] The fence around the observatory terrace was put up in 1947 after five people tried to jump over a three-week span.[12] In 1979, Elvita Adams jumped from the 86th floor, only to be blown back onto the 85th floor and left with only a broken hip.[13] The building was also the site of suicides in 2004 and 2006. Most recently a lawyer committed suicide by leaping from the 69th floor on Friday, April 13 2007. [14]

Features

Interior of the entrance lobby

The Empire State Building rises to 381 m (1,250 feet) at the 102nd floor, and its full structural height (including broadcast antenna) reaches 443 m (1,453 ft and 8 9/16th in). The building has 85 stories of commercial and office space (200,465 m²/ 2,158,000 sq. ft.) and an indoor and outdoor observation deck on the 86th floor. The remaining 16 stories represent the spire, which is capped by a 102nd floor observatory, and atop the spire is an antenna topped off with a lightning rod. The Empire State Building is the first building to have more than 100 floors. The building weighs approximately 330,000 Mg (370,000 tons).

The Empire State Building has 6,500 windows, 73 elevators and there are 1,860 steps from street level to the 102nd floor. It has a total floor area of approximately 254,000 m² (2,768,591 sq. ft.). The base of the Empire State Building is about 0.8 ha (2 acres), and the lobby is five stories tall. The building houses 1,000 businesses, and has its own zip code. As of 2007, approximately 20,000 employees work in the building every day, making the Empire State Building the second largest single office complex in America after The Pentagon. The building was completed in one year and 45 days. The building’s original sixty-four elevators are located in a central core. Today, the Empire State Building has 73 elevators in all, including service elevators. It takes less than one minute, by elevator, to get to the 86th floor, where an observation deck is located. The building has 6,500 windows, 70 miles of pipe, and 2,500,000 feet of electrical wire[15]. The building weighs approximately 370,000 tons. The Empire State Building cost $40,948,900 to build.

A series of setbacks causes the building to taper off with height.

Unlike most of today's high-rise buildings, the Empire State Building features a classic façade. The modernistic stainless steel canopies of the entrances on 33rd and 34th Streets lead to two-story-high corridors around the elevator core, crossed by stainless steel and glass-enclosed bridges at the second floor level. The elevator core contains 67 elevators.[3]

The lobby is three stories high and features an aluminum relief of the skyscraper without the antenna, which was not added to the spire until 1952. The north corridor contains eight illuminated panels, created by Roy Sparkia and Renée Nemorov in 1963, depicting the building as the Eighth Wonder of the World alongside the traditional seven.

Long-term forecasting of the life cycle of the structure was implemented at the design phase to ensure that the building's future intended uses were not restricted by the requirements of future generations. This is particularly evident in the over-design of the building's electrical system.

Floodlights

Empire State Building - A Night View from GE Building.
Red and green floodlights illuminate the building during Christmas.

In 1964, floodlights were added to illuminate the top of the building at night, in colors chosen to match seasonal and other events, such as Christmas.[16] After the eightieth birthday and subsequent death of Frank Sinatra, for example, the building was bathed in blue light to represent the singer's nickname "Ol' Blue Eyes." After the death of actress Fay Wray in late 2004, the building stood in complete darkness for 15 minutes.[17]

The floodlights bathed the building in red, white, and blue for several months after the destruction of the World Trade Center, then reverted to the standard schedule.[18] Traditionally, in addition to the standard schedule the building will be lit in the colors of New York's sports teams on the nights they have home games (orange, blue and white for the New York Knicks, red, white and blue for the New York Rangers, and so on). The building is illuminated in tennis ball yellow during the U.S. Open tennis tournament in late August and early September. It was even lit scarlet red twice for Rutgers University, once for an American football game on November 9 2006, when they played the University of Louisville in what would result in the biggest win in university history, and again on April 3 2007 when the women's basketball team played Tennessee in the national championship game.[19]

In June 2002, during the Golden Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, New York City illuminated the Empire State Building in purple and gold (the monarchical colors of the Royal House of Windsor). New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that it was a sign of saying thank you to HM The Queen for having the National Anthem of the United States played at Buckingham Palace after the September 11, 2001 attacks, as well as the support the United Kingdom provided afterwards.

The building has also been known to illuminate purple and white in honor of graduating students from New York University.

The New York Mets beat the New York Yankees in the May 18-20 Subway Series 2 games out of 3, and had the spoil of having the building bathed in Orange and Blue on Monday, May 21.

Observation decks

The Empire State Building has one of the most popular outdoor observatories in the world, having been visited by over 110 million people. The 86th floor observation deck offers impressive 360-degree views of the city. There is a second observation deck on the 102nd floor that is open to the public. It was closed in 1999, but reopened in November 2005. Completely enclosed and much smaller, it may be closed on high-traffic days.

On April 27 2006, daredevil Jeb Corliss, who was one of the stuntmen on the Discovery Channel series Stunt Junkies, was arrested after attempting to parachute off of the 86th floor observation balcony. He had passed internal security disguised as an old person with a fat suit and latex mask, and was getting ready to make his jump wearing a parachute and video equipment when building security and the NYPD intercepted him after he had scaled up and over the iron suicide fence and arrested him as he was about to jump. He faces several felony charges, including endangerment of his own life and others around. Subsequently, Discovery Networks denied it had given Corliss any permission to attempt the stunt, noting they require their production companies to obtain permits and permissions from local authorities before any filming. The network then fired him from Stunt Junkies and gave him a lifetime ban from appearing on any other Discovery Networks project.[20] [21]

A panoramic view of New York City from the 86th floor observation deck of the Empire State Building, spring 2005

Broadcast stations

New York City is the largest media market in the United States. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, nearly all of the city's commercial broadcast stations (both television and FM radio) have transmitted from the top of the Empire State Building, although a few FM stations are located at the nearby Condé Nast Building. Most New York City AM stations broadcast from just across the river in New Jersey.

Communications devices for broadcast stations are located at the top of the Empire State Building.

Broadcasting began at Empire on December 22, 1931 when RCA began transmitting experimental television broadcasts from a small antenna erected atop the spire (no longer a space reserved for dirigibles, after being proven impractical). They leased the 85th floor and built a laboratory there, and—in 1934—RCA was joined by Edwin Howard Armstrong in a cooperative venture to test his FM system from the Empire antenna. When Armstrong and RCA fell out in 1935 and his FM equipment was removed, the 85th floor became the home of RCA's New York television operations, first as experimental station W2XBS channel 1, which eventually became (on July 1, 1941) commercial station WNBT, channel 1 (now WNBC-TV channel 4). NBC's FM station (WEAF-FM, now WQHT) began transmitting from the antenna in 1940. NBC retained exclusive use of the top of the Empire until 1950, when the FCC ordered the exclusive deal broken, based on consumer complaints that a common location was necessary for the (now) seven New York television stations to transmit from so that receiving antennas would not have to be constantly adjusted. Construction on a giant tower began. Other television broadcasters then joined RCA at Empire, on the 83rd, 82nd, and 81st floors, frequently bringing sister FM stations along for the ride. Multiple transmissions of TV and FM began from the new tower in 1951. In 1965, a separate set of FM antennas were constructed ringing the 102nd floor observation area. When the World Trade Center was being constructed, it caused serious problems for the television stations, most of which moved to the World Trade Center as soon as it was completed. This made it possible to renovate the antenna structure and the transmitter facilities for the benefit of the FM stations remaining there, which were soon joined by other FMs and UHF TVs moving in from elsewhere in the metropolitan area. The destruction of the World Trade Center necessitated a great deal of shuffling of antennas and transmitter rooms in order to accommodate the stations moving back uptown.

As of 2005, the Empire State Building is home to the following stations:

Similar skyscrapers

120 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

120 Collins Street is a skyscraper in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, built from 1989 to 1991. It is built in postmodern style and pays homage to New York's Empire State Building. This influence can be seen in the building's granite facade, its setbacks and its central mast. It is probably the most similar modern building to the Empire State Building.

Another building also in Melbourne, 101 Collins Street, is a modern variant on the Empire State Building and has a very similar shape and mast yet has a glass facade.

Height comparison with the Sears Tower, Taipei 101 and the Petronas Twin Towers

The Torre Latinoamericana in Mexico City looks very similar to the Empire State Building, including setbacks and antenna. The main differences are the size and outer panelling — the Torre Latinoamericana is glass-panelled on the outside. Also of similar design are the Seven Sisters in Moscow (such as the main building of Moscow State University) and the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, Poland. The Williams Tower in Houston is a glass-architecture version of the design, and the entrance on the ground floor is very similar.

The Reynolds Building, headquarters for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in Winston-Salem, North Carolina is said to be the prototype for the Empire State Building. The Carew Tower in Cincinnati is also thought to be an influence on the Empire State Building's design, due to the similar design by the same architectural firm, Shreve, Lamb and Harmon Associates. Another tower thought to be an inspiration for the Empire State Building is the Penobscot Building in Detroit, Michigan, completed in 1928.

The PPL Building, headquarters for PPL - formerly Pennsylvania Power and Light - located in Allentown, Pennsylvania is another structure with great similarity. Local legend says that architects and construction personnel for the Empire State Building visited Allentown to view the PPL Building for research and inspiration. The PPL Building was completed in 1928.

The Altino Arantes Building in São Paulo, Brazil is considered among many people as the most similar building to the Empire State Building.

References

  1. ^ Please note that the entire 10118 series of 9-digit ZIP Codes are assigned to the Empire State Building. Source: USPS.
  2. ^ a b c d Kenneth T. Jackson: The Encyclopedia of New York City: The New York Historical Society; Yale University Press; 1995. P. 375-376.
  3. ^ a b White, Norval & Willensky, Elliot; AIA Guide to New York City, 4th Edition; New York Chapter, American Institute of Architects; Crown Publishers. 2000. p.226.
  4. ^ National Park Service, National Historic Landmark survey (New York), retrieved May 27, 2007.
  5. ^ winstonsalemskyscrapers.com
  6. ^ about.com – Empire State Building Trivia and Cool Facts
  7. ^ [1] – NYT Travel: Empire State Building
  8. ^ pbs.org – New York: A Documentary Film
  9. ^ tms.org
  10. ^ guinnessworldrecords.com
  11. ^ iht.com
  12. ^ Compass American Guides: Manhattan, 4th Edition. Reavill, Gil and Zimmerman, Jean P. 160.
  13. ^ hytti.uku.fi
  14. ^ New York Daily News
  15. ^ [2]
  16. ^ Lelyveld, Joseph (February 23, 1964). "The Empire State to Glow at Night". The New York Times.
  17. ^ [3] thevillager.com
  18. ^ esbnyc.com
  19. ^ espn.com
  20. ^ broadcastingcable.com
  21. ^ dsc.discovery.com

Further reading

  • The Empire State Building Book, by Jonathan Goldman, St. Martin's Press, 1980.
  • Unbuilding, by David Macaulay, Houghton Mifflin, 1986.
  • The Empire State Building - The making of a landmark, by John Tauranac, Scribner, 1995.
  • Construction: Building the Impossible, by Nathan Aaseng, The Oliver Press, Inc., 2000.
  • Empire: A Tale of Obsession, Betrayal, and the Battle for an American Icon, by Mitchell Pacelle, Wiley, 2002
  • Higher: A Historic Race to the Sky and the Making of a City, by Neal Bascomb, Doubleday, 2003
  • Building The Empire State, edited by Carol Willis, Norton, 1998.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Empire State Building.
Template:Incumbent succession box
Preceded by World's tallest freestanding structure on land
1931—1967 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Tallest building in the world
1931—1972 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Tallest Building in New York City
1931—1972 		Succeeded by

40°44′54″N 73°59′09″W / 40.7484°N 73.9858°W / 40.7484; -73.9858

Template:Link FA

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