The Empire State Building is a 102-story skyscraper located in Midtown Manhattan,New York City, at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. It has a roof height of 1,250 feet (381 meters), and with its antenna spire included, it stands a total of 1,454 ft (443.2 m) high.[6] Its name is derived from the nickname for New York, the Empire State. It stood as the world's tallest building for 40 years, from its completion in 1931 until construction of the World Trade Center's North Tower was completed in 1972. Following the September 11 attacks in 2001, the Empire State Building was again the tallest building in New York (although it was no longer the tallest in the US or the world). The Empire State Building was once again demoted to second-tallest building in New York on April 30, 2012, when the new One World Trade Center reached a greater height.[10] The Empire State Building is currently the third-tallest completed skyscraper in the United States (after the Willis Tower and Trump International Hotel and Tower, both in Chicago), and the 22nd-tallest in the world (the tallest now is Burj Khalifa, located in Dubai). It is also the fourth-tallest freestanding structure in the Americas.
The Empire State Building is generally thought of as an American cultural icon. It is designed in the distinctive Art Deco style and has been named as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers. 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.[11] It was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1986.[8][12][13] In 2007, it was ranked number one on the List of America's Favorite Architecture according to the AIA.
The building is owned by the 2800 investors in Empire State Building Associates L.L.C.[14]The Empire State Building is currently undergoing a $550 million renovation, with $120 million spent in an effort to transform the building into a more energy efficient and eco-friendly structure.[15] Receiving a gold Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating in September 2011, the Empire State Building is the tallest LEED certified building in the United States.[16] Contents [hide]
1 History
1.1 Design and construction
1.2 Opening
1.3 Suicides
1.4 1945 plane crash
1.5 Shootings
2 Architecture
2.1 Floodlights
2.2 Dirigible (airship) terminal
2.3 Height records and comparisons
2.4 Observation decks
2.5 New York Skyride
2.6 Green retrofit
3 Broadcast stations
4 Neighboring Midtown Manhattan landmarks
5 Empire State Building Run-Up
6 In popular culture
7 Notable tenants
8 Gallery
9 See also
10 Notes
11 Further reading
12 External links
History
The site of the Empire State Building was first developed as the John Thompson Farm in the late 18th century.[17] At the time, a stream ran across the site, emptying into Sunfish Pond, located a block away. Beginning in the late 19th century, the block was occupied by the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, frequented by The Four Hundred, the social elite of New York.
The limestone for the Empire State Building came from the Empire Mill in Sanders, Indiana which is an unincorporated town adjacent to Bloomington, Indiana. The Empire Mill Land office is near State Road 37 and Old State Road 37 just south of Bloomington. Bloomington, Bedford and Oolitic area are known as the limestone capital of the world. It is a point of local pride that the stone for the Empire State building came from there.
Design and construction
The Empire State Building was designed by William F. Lamb from the architectural firmShreve, Lamb and Harmon, which produced the building drawings in just two weeks, using its earlier designs for the Reynolds Building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and theCarew Tower in Cincinnati, Ohio (designed by the architectural firm W. W. Ahlschlager & Associates) as a basis.[18][19] Every year the staff of the Empire State Building sends a Father's Day card to the staff at the Reynolds Building in Winston-Salem to pay homage to its role as predecessor to the Empire State Building.[20] The building was designed from the top down.[21] The general contractors were The Starrett Brothers and Eken, and the project was financed primarily by John J. Raskob and Pierre S. du Pont. The construction company was chaired by Alfred E. Smith, a former Governor of New York and James Farley's General Builders Supply Corporation supplied the building materials.[3] John W. Bowser was project construction superintendent.[22][23][24]
Excavation of the site began on January 22, 1930, and construction on the building itself started symbolically on March 17—St. Patrick's Day—per Al Smith's influence as Empire State, Inc. president. The project involved 3,400 workers, mostly immigrants from Europe, along with hundreds of Mohawk iron workers, many from the Kahnawake reserve near Montreal. According to official accounts, five workers died during the construction.[25] Governor Smith's grandchildren cut the ribbon on May 1, 1931. Lewis Wickes Hine's photography of the construction provides not only invaluable documentation of the construction, but also a glimpse into common day life of workers in that era.[26]
The construction was part of an intense competition in New York for the title of "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. Each held the title for less than a year, as the Empire State Building surpassed them upon its completion, just 410 days after construction commenced. The project was completed ahead of schedule and under budget. Instead of taking 18 months as anticipated, the construction took just under fifteen. Due to reduced costs during the Depression, the final costs totaled only $24.7 million (372.8 million 2012 dollars) instead of the estimated $43 million. 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. Coincidentally, the first use of tower lights atop the Empire State Building, the following year, was for the purpose of signaling the victory of Franklin D. Roosevelt over Hoover in the presidential election of November 1932.[27]
Opening
The building's opening coincided with the Great Depression in the United States, and as a result much of its office space was initially unrented. The building's vacancy was exacerbated by its poor location on 34th Street, which placed it relatively far from public transportation, as Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station were (and are) several blocks away, as is the more-recently built Port Authority Bus Terminal. Other more successful skyscrapers, such as the Chrysler Building, did not have this problem. In its first year of operation, the observation deck took in approximately 2 million dollars, as much money as its owners made in rent that year. The lack of renters led New Yorkers to deride the building as the "Empty State Building".[28][29] The building would not become profitable until 1950. The famous 1951 sale of The Empire State Building to Roger L. Stevens and his business partners was brokered by the prominent upper Manhattan real-estate firm Charles F. Noyes & Company for a record $51 million. At the time, that was the highest price paid for a single structure in real-estate history.[30]
Suicides
Over the years, more than thirty people have committed suicide from the top of the building.[31] The first suicide occurred even before its completion, by a worker who had been laid off. The fence around the observatory terrace was put up in 1947 after five people tried to jump during a three-week span.[32]
On May 1, 1947, 23-year-old Evelyn McHale leapt to her death from the 86th floor observation deck and landed on a United Nationslimousine parked at the curb. Photography student Robert Wiles took a photo of McHale's oddly intact corpse a few minutes after her death. The police found a suicide note among possessions she left on the observation deck: "He is much better off without me ... I wouldn’t make a good wife for anybody". The photo ran in the May 12, 1947 edition of Life magazine[33] and is often referred to as "The Most Beautiful Suicide". It was later used by visual artist Andy Warhol in one of his prints entitled Suicide (Fallen Body).
On December 2, 1979, Elvita Adams jumped from the 86th floor, only to be blown back onto the 85th floor by a gust of wind and left with a broken hip.[34][35][36]
Only one person has jumped from the upper observatory. On November 3, 1932, Frederick Eckert of Astoria, Queens, ran past a guard in the enclosed 102nd floor gallery and jumped a gate leading to an outdoor catwalk intended for dirigible passengers. Eckert's body landed on the roof of the 86th floor observation promenade.[37]
1945 plane crash
A night view from the observatory, looking south
Main article: B-25 Empire State Building crash
At 9:40 a.m.on Saturday, July 28, 1945, a B-25 Mitchell bomber, piloted in thick fog byLieutenant Colonel William Franklin Smith, Jr.,[38] 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 flew as far as the next block where it landed on the roof of a nearby building, starting a fire that destroyed a penthouse. The other engine and part of the landing gear plummeted down an elevator shaft. The resulting fire was extinguished in 40 minutes. 14 people were killed in the accident.[39][40] 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.[41] Despite the damage and loss of life, the building was open for business on many floors on the following Monday. The crash helped spur the passage of the long-pending Federal Tort Claims Act of 1946, as well as the insertion of retroactive provisions into the law, allowing people to sue the government for the accident.[42]
A year later, another aircraft narrowly missed striking the building.[43]
Shootings
Two major shooting incidents have occurred at or in front of the Empire State Building.
On February 24, 1997, a gunman shot seven people on the observation deck, killing one, then fatally wounded himself.[44]
On August 24, 2012 at about 9 a.m. EDT, on the sidewalk at the Fifth Avenue side of the building, a gunman shot and killed a former co-worker from a workplace that had laid him off in 2011. When two police officers confronted the gunman, 58-year-old Jeffrey T. Johnson, he aimed his firearm at them. They responded by firing 16 shots at Johnson, killing him but also wounding nine bystanders, most of whom were hit by fragments, although three took direct hits from stray bullets.[45]
There is as yet no vaccine to protect against Dengue fever and the only way to prevent dengue virus transmission is to avoid being bitten by the disease-carrying mosquitoes.
