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Surprising Facts About the Empire State Building

1. It was constructed during a race to create the world’s tallest building.

Credit: Tetra Images/Getty Images

In the late-1920s, as New York’s economy boomed like never before, builders were in
a mad dash to erect the world’s largest skyscraper. The main competition was between
40 Wall Street’s Bank of Manhattan building and the Chrysler Building, an elaborate Art
Deco structure conceived by car mogul Walter Chrysler as a “monument to me.” Both
towers tried to best each other by adding more floors to their design, and the race
really heated up in August 1929, when General Motors executive John J. Raskob and
former New York Governor Al Smith announced plans for the Empire State Building.
Upon learning that the Empire State would be 1,000 feet tall, Chrysler changed his
plans a final time and fixed a stainless steel spire to the top of his skyscraper. The
addition saw the Chrysler Building soar to a record 1,048 feet, but unfortunately for
Chrysler, Raskob and Smith simply went back to the drawing board and returned with
an even taller design for the Empire State Building. When completed in 1931, the
colossus loomed 1,250 feet over the streets of Midtown Manhattan. It would remain the
world’s tallest building for nearly 40 years until the completion of the first World Trade
Center tower in 1970.

2. It was modeled after two earlier buildings.

North Carolina’s Reynolds Building. (Credit: Gabriel Benzur/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images)

When he drew up its plans in 1929, architect William Lamb of the firm Shreve, Lamb
and Harmon is said to have modeled the Empire State Building after Winston-Salem,
North Carolina’s Reynolds Building—which he had previously designed—and Carew
Tower in Cincinnati. The two earlier Art Deco buildings are now often cited as the
Empire State’s architectural ancestors. On the Reynolds Building’s 50th anniversary in
1979, the Empire State Building’s general manager even sent a card that read, “Happy
Anniversary, Dad.”
3. The building was finished in record time.

Construction of the Empire State Building (Credit: Daniel Ahmad/Wikimedia Commons)

Despite the colossal size of the project, the design, planning and construction of the
Empire State Building took just 20 months from start to finish. After demolishing the
Waldorf-Astoria hotel—the plot’s previous occupant—contractors Starrett Brothers and
Eken used an assembly line process to erect the new skyscraper in a brisk 410 days.
Using as many as 3,400 men each day, they assembled its skeleton at a record pace
of four and a half stories per week—so fast that the first 30 stories were completed
before certain details of the ground floor were finalized. The Empire State Building was
eventually finished ahead of schedule and under budget, but it also came with a human
cost: at least five workers were killed during the construction process.

4. Its upper tower was originally designed as a mooring mast for airships.
 Blimp near the mooring mast. (Credit: New York Daily News Archive / Contributor)

By far the most unusual aspect of the Empire State Building’s design concerned its
200-foot tower. Convinced that transatlantic airship travel was the wave of the future,
the building’s owners originally constructed the mast as a docking port for lighter-than-
air dirigibles. The harebrained scheme called for the airships to maneuver alongside
the building and tether themselves to a winching apparatus. Passengers would then
exit via an open-air gangplank, check in at a customs office and make their way to the
streets of Manhattan in a mere seven minutes. Despite early enthusiasm for the
project, the high winds near the building’s rooftop proved all but impossible for pilots to
negotiate. The closest thing to a “landing” came in September 1931, when a small
dirigible tethered itself to the spire for a few minutes. Two weeks later, a Goodyear
blimp dropped a stack of newspapers on the roof a part of a publicity stunt, but the
airship plan was abandoned shortly thereafter.