Empire State Building

The Empire State Building, a 102-story Art Deco building in New York City, was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon Associates and built in 1930.

History and statistics

It is 390 m to the 102nd floor observatory; it is the tallest building in the city (before the construction, and following the destruction, of the World Trade Center), and was the tallest building in the world for many years. It is currently the 2nd tallest building in the United States (see the 50 Tallest buildings in the U.S. list.) construction was hurried to completion, in order to take the title of "world's tallest building" from the Chrysler Building. The Empire State Building was officially opened on May 1, 1931. Much of the office space went unrented until the 1940s. This lack of inhabitance earned it the nickname "Empty State Building" in its early years.

A public observatory at the top of the building offers impressive views of the city, and is a popular tourist destination. Floodlights illuminate the top of the building at night, in colors chosen to match seasonal and other events; they were red, white, and blue for several months after the destruction of the World Trade Center, then reverted to marking holidays.

The building weighs approximately 330,000 metric tonnes. There are 73 elevators, the stairs to the top consists of 1,860 steps. The building has 6,500 windows and there are floodlights that illuminate the top of the building on important days. Total floor area: 204,385 m² (2,200,000 ft²)

It is located at 350 Fifth Avenue zip code 10118, between 33rd and 34th Streets, in Midtown, Manhattan.

The location of the Empire State building is directly across from Weehawken Cove, on the other side of the Hudson River.

The Empire State Building in pop culture

Perhaps the most famous popular culture representation of the building is in the 1933 film King Kong, in which the title character, a giant ape, climbs to the top to escape his captors, and eventually dies by falling off of it. In 1983, for the 50th anniversary of the film, an inflatable King Kong was placed on the real Empire State Building. However, a mouse chewed through it one day, partially deflating the ape. He also needed a constant supply of air, and was never fully inflated. The observation deck was the designated site for romantic rendezvous in the films Love Affair and Sleepless In Seattle and a phony Martian invasion in an episode of I Love Lucy. An episode of the puppet science fiction series Thunderbirds involves an attempt to move the building on tracks to a new location. In the movie Independence Day, the building is destroyed by a gigantic alien ship.

1945 plane crash

At 9:49 a.m. on Saturday July 28, 1945, a B-25 Mitchell bomber accidentally crashed into the north side at the 79th floor, where the offices of the National Catholic Welfare Council were located. The fire was extinguished in 40 minutes. In the accident 13 people were killed.

Urban climber

Without warning, in 1994, French urban climber, Alain "Spiderman" Robert, using only his bare hands and feet and with no safety devices of any kind, scaled the building's exterior wall all the way to the top.

Significance

The Empire State Building has been declared one of the modern Seven Wonders of the World by the American Society of Civil Engineers. It also belongs to the World Federation of Great Towers.

The Name

The building is so named because The Empire State is New York' state nickname.

See also

• 50 Tallest buildings in the U.S.

External Links