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The Empire State Building is a 102-story contemporary Art Deco style building in New York City , declared by the ASCE to be one of the Seven Wonders Of The Modern World . Designed by Shreve, Lamb And Harmon , it was finished in 1931 . The tower takes its name from the Nickname of New York State . Since the September 11th Attacks , it is again the tallest building in New York City. The building belongs to the World Federation Of Great Towers . DESCRIPTION Unlike most of today's high-rise buildings, the Empire State has a classic masonry facade. The building's distinctive art deco Spire was originally designed to be a mooring mast and depot for Zeppelin s. However, after a couple of test attempts with Airships , the idea proved to be impractical and dangerous due to the powerful updrafts caused by the size of the building itself, though the T-shaped mooring devices remain in place. Although the lower floors occupy the entire block, there are various "setbacks" in the building's design, as required by the New York City zoning law of 1916 (aimed at reducing shadows cast by tall buildings). These setbacks give the building its unique tapered silhouette. The lobby is three stories high and contains an aluminum relief of the skyscraper. 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. A public outdoor observatory at the 86th floor offers impressive 360-degree views of the city (the first of its kind), and is a popular tourist destination. STATISTICS The tower rises to 1,250 Feet ( 381 m ) at the 102nd floor, and its full structural height (including broadcast antenna) reaches 1,472 Feet ( 448 m ). It was the first building to have more than 100 floors. It remained the tallest skyscraper in the world for a record 41 years (and the world's tallest man-made structure for 23 years) until the construction of the World Trade Center , and shortly afterwards the Sears Tower . Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 , the Empire State Building regained the title of tallest building in New York City , and the 2nd tallest building in the United States (see the 50 Tallest Buildings In The U.S. list). The building weighs approximately 330,000 Metric Tonnes . The building has 6,500 windows, 73 Elevator s and 1,860 steps to the top floor. Total floor area: 2,200,000 square feet (200,000 m&2) The Empire State Building is located at 350 , on the other side of the Hudson River . On May 1st, 2006, The Empire State Building celebrated its 75th birthday. HISTORY The site was first developed as the John Thomson Farm, in the late 18th century. The building stands on a block once occupied by the original Waldorf Hotel , a place frequented by The Four Hundred , the social elite of New York, in the late 19th century. Excavation of the site for the Empire State Building began on January 22, 1930, and construction on the building itself started on March 17th. The project involved 3400 workers, mostly immigrants, along with hundreds of Mohawk Nation iron workers; 14 of the workers died during constructionhttp://www.cnn.com/2006/US/04/29/empire.state.ap/index.html. The project was hurried to completion in order to take the title of "world's tallest building" from the nearby Chrysler Building . The Empire State Building was officially opened on May 1 , 1931 , when President Herbert Hoover pressed a button in Washington, D.C. that turned on the building's lights, 410 days after construction commenced. From its opening until the 1940s much of its office space went unrented. This lack of inhabitants earned it the nickname "Empty State Building" in its early years. At 9:49 a.m. on Saturday July 28 , 1945 , a B-25 Mitchell Bomber accidentally crashed into the north side between the 79th and 80th floors, where the offices of the National Catholic Welfare Council were located. The fire was extinguished in 40 minutes. 14 people were killed in the accidenthttp://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/News/News8-0112.html. Following the accident, elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver survived a plunge of 75 stories inside an elevator, and currently holds the Guinness World Record for the longest survived elevator fall recordedhttp://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/content_pages/record.asp?recordid=53746. The large broadcasting antenna rising from the top of the spire was added in 1952 . FLOODLIGHTS Floodlights illuminate the top of the building at night, in colors chosen to match seasonal and other events, such as Christmas and Channukah . After the 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. The floodlights bathed the building in red, white, and blue for several months after the destruction of the , red, white and blue for the New York Rangers , and so on). The building is illumintated in tennis ball yellow during the US Open. USE BY MASS MEDIA The Empire State Building has been described as "the most valuable building in American broadcasting". New York City is the largest media market in the United States, and since September 11, 2001 , nearly all of New York's commercial broadcast stations (both television and radio) have transmitted from the top of Empire. A few stations are located at the nearby Conde Nast Building , however. Broadcasting began at Empire in the late 1930s, when RCA leased the 85th floor and built a laboratory there for Edwin Howard Armstrong . When Armstrong and RCA fell out, the 85th floor became the home of RCA's New York television operations, first as an experimental station and eventually as a commercial station WNBT, channel 4 (now WNBC-TV ). Other television broadcasters would join RCA at Empire, on the 83rd, 82nd, and 81st floors, frequently bringing sister FM stations along for the ride. 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. 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 disguising as an old person with a fat suit, and was getting ready to make his jump wearing a parachute and video equipment when Port Authority security intercepted him trying to scale up the iron suicide fence and arrested him. 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 authorites before any filming. The network then fired him from ''Stunt Junkies'' and gave him a lifetime ban from appearing on any other Discovery Networks projecthttp://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6329593.html?title=Article&spacedesc=news http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/stuntjunkies/stuntjunkies.html. Communications arrays As Of 2005 , Empire is home to the following stations:
SIMILAR SKYSCRAPERS The Torre Latinoamericana in Mexico City looks very similar to the Empire State Building. Also of similar design are the Seven Sisters in Moscow, such as the Moscow State University building 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 the oldest skyscraper in the southeastern United States, and said to be the prototype for the Empire State Building. The Carew Tower in Cincinnati , is also thought to be the basis of the tower, due to its similar design also by Shreve, Lamb And Harmon Associates. IN POP CULTURE
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GALLERY 360° Panorama, Manhattan, Empire State Building (to view, move the slidebar at the bottom of the picture with your mouse) |
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