Empire State Building | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Constructed in 1930-31, the Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world for forty years, until the construction of New York's World Trade Center in 1971 and, despite being overtaken in terms of its height, both in the United States and abroad, has remained America's most internationally famous architectural icon. It is both a shining example of the aesthetic and functional possibilities of the skyscraper form, and a potent symbol of the Manhattan metropolis it inhabits. The Empire State has played a prominent role in several Hollywood movies and has been the subject of countlessessays and artworks, while an infinite number of products have been marketed, capitalizing on its familiar image.

The building demonstrated the extent to which corporate capitalism came to represent America to the rest of the world. It was the fruit of a speculative real estate venture by the Empire State Company, an organization whose major investors were John J. Raskob of General Motors and Coleman and Pierre du Pont. The former New York governor and presidential candidate Alfred E. Smith served as the company's president and front man. The project began with the purchase of land, formerly owned by the Astor family, on Fifth Avenue between 33rd and 34th Streets in midtown Manhattan. From the start, there was no "anchor tenant" or big company to occupy and associate with the building, unlike the nearby Chrysler Building or the famous downtown Woolworth Building. In 1929, just two months after the first public announcement of the Empire State venture, "Black Friday" struck on Wall Street, but the developers gambled on an economic turnaround and proceeded with their plans.

On May 1, 1931, at a ceremony attended by President Herbert Hoover and New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Empire State Building was officially opened. Construction had taken only 12 months—a remarkable rate of progress, during which the building's steel skeleton was erected in a mere 23 weeks. (During one period in 1930, workers put up 14 floors in ten days!) For promotional purposes, the developers had specifically set out to build the tallest building in the world. They achieved their goal. Reaching a height of 1,250 feet, the Empire State was almost 200 feet taller than its rival, the glitteringly flamboyant Chrysler Building, by comparison withwhich its design style, by the architectural firm of Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, was relatively sedate. The building's form was determined by its height and the setbacks required by the 1916 New York Zoning Laws. There was no elaborate decoration on the limestone exterior to attract the eye; instead, the building relied on its graceful form, enlivened by the conscientious use of setbacks, to provide an aesthetic effect. At the top, on the 102nd floor, was an open-air observation deck beneath a huge mooring mast intended by the developers to serve as an enticement for zeppelin landings. (No zeppelin ever docked, though).

The first years, however, were lean. The building was only half-full when it opened, and with only a twenty-five percent occupancy rate during the 1930s, was often dubbed the "Empty State Building." At times it seemed that only the income from the popular 86th and 102nd floor observation decks were keeping the premises alive. Nonetheless, almost immediately after opening, the Empire State Building became a cultural icon. In its first year of operation, over one million sightseers visited the observation decks, and Hollywood soon spotted its movie potential. The building's association with the movies famously began with King Kong in 1933, and surfaced as an integral plot strand many times since, including in An Affair to Remember (1957) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993). The building is a ubiquitous icon of the city's tourist trade, and millions of replicas of varying sizes have been sold to visitors and native New Yorkers alike.

There is no obvious explanation as to why the Empire State Building has continued to attract successive generations of visitors and admirers. People remain fascinated by the sheer (and ever increasing) size of skyscrapers, but impressive edifices such as Chicago's Sears Tower or New York's World Trade Center, have failed to capture the public affection in which the Empire State is held. The Empire State has not been the world's tallest building in decades; neither is it universally considered to be the most beautiful or the most interesting of the world's skyscrapers. Nevertheless, its special place in the hearts of Americans has not been superseded. During the Depression, the building was a stalwart symbol of optimism. As Alfred E. Smith said at the dedication ceremony, the Empire State Building is "the greatest monument to ingenuity, to skill, to brain power, to muscle power" And he might have added, to triumph in the face of adversity. After World War II, it was the emblem of America's triumphant emergence as the world's preeminent economic and cultural power; from the 1950s onwards, the building's elegant beauty put to shame (with certain honorable exception such as Mies van der Rohe's Seagram building) the forest of impersonal glass boxes that came to alter the face of Manhattan. With its many historic and romantic resonances, The Empire State Building represents much more than just a pioneering triumph of scale.

Douglas, George H. Skyscrapers: A Social History of the Very Tall Building in America. Jefferson, North Carolina and London, McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996.

Goldman, Jonathan. The Empire State Building Book. New York, St. Martin's Press, 1980.

James, Theodore, Jr. The Empire State Building. New York, Harper & Row, 1975.

Reynolds, Donald Martin. The Architecture of New York City. New York, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1984.

Tauranc, John. The Empire State Building: The Making of a Landmark. New York, St. Martin's Griffin, 1997.

Willis, Carol, ed. Building the Empire State. New York, W.W.Norton, 1998.

This is the complete article, containing 957 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page).