The Empire State Building

The Making of a Landmark

John Tauranac

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780801471087
• Topic: Arquitectura
• Subtopic: Historia de la arquitectura

The Empire State Building is the landmark book on one of the world's most notable landmarks. Since its publication in 1995, John Tauranac's book, focused on the inception and construction of the building, has stood as the most comprehensive account of the structure. Moreover, it is far more than a work in architectural history; Tauranac tells a larger story of the politics of urban development in and through the interwar years. In a new epilogue to the Cornell edition, Tauranac highlights the continuing resonance and influence of the Empire State Building in the rapidly changing post-9/11 cityscape.

1

THE BUILDING

The Empire State’s

Ambitious mass

Is, take it from

The critics, class.

—Price Day, The New Yorker, 1932

Before we set out on the story of the Empire State Building, I want to make one point perfectly clear: This book is about the building in Manhattan at 350 Fifth Avenue, on the west side of the avenue between Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth Streets, block number 835, lot number 41. The building is 102 stories high, 1,250 feet tall—1,454 feet if you include the television antenna. You might think me oddly pedantic to point out these facts, but I want to reduce the chance for any misunderstandings.

There was, and still is, another Empire State Building in Manhattan, the existence of which, never very widely known in the first place, was eclipsed by the glory of the mighty structure at Thirty-fourth Street. The other Empire State Building, at 640 Broadway on the southeast corner of Bleecker Street, is a far different structure from its uptown namesake. A New York Sun reporter stumbled upon the building in 1932, and described it as a rather drab, gray stone structure of nine stories, extending some distance east on Bleecker Street. Its chief occupants were two firms of pants manufacturers, a window-cleaning company, and the Millinery Workers Union. A candy and cigar store occupied the ground-floor corner. Why the Broadway building was called the Empire State when it was built in 1897 is a mystery—perhaps the builder simply wanted to celebrate the state the building was in—but the name was carved in stone above the doorway until the building was “improved.” The name is now obliterated by a piece of greenish material. Although the accident of names seems the only link between the two Empire State Buildings, the superlatives biggest, largest tenuously link them as well. The building on Broadway at Bleecker Street was designed by De Lemos & Cordes, the architects of two of the “biggest, largest” department stores in the world—the Siegel-Cooper Store on Sixth Avenue and Eighteenth Street, and the Macy’s at Herald Square. For the record, this story is not about the building on Broadway at Bleecker Street. It is about the landmark building on Fifth Avenue between Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth Streets.

The Empire State Building is a landmark in both meanings of the word—it is a lowercase l landmark in that it marks the land, and it is a landmark in what some people regard as a higher order of landmark. In its geographic sense, the building stands majestically alone in the mountain range of New York’s skyscrapers. It serves to provide your bearings, acting as a mark you can use to triangulate. You can see it from SoHo and Little Italy, from Broadway and Seventy-fifth Street or from Adams Street in downtown Brooklyn, from the New Jersey Turnpike or the upper deck of the George Washington Bridge. It became a designated New York City landmark in 1981, the year of the building’s golden jubilee; it was listed on the State and National Register of Historic Places in 1982; and, in 1986, the National Parks Service recognized it as a National Historic Landmark.

As an uppercase L landmark, it fulfills all the qualifications for designation as set down by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission—it has special historical, cultural, and aesthetic value, and is an important part of the city’s historical and architectural heritage. In the frequently cantankerous world of landmark designation, no witness spoke against designation at the hearing.¹ More important, perhaps, the Empire State was designated for some of the most elemental reasons. The report prepared by the commission’s Anthony W. Robins began by saying that the building was “the best-known symbol of New York City,” and ended by saying that it “remains New York’s preeminent landmark.” The building has no competition. It is peerless.

In both uses of landmark, the Empire State Building looms large in the legend of New York. No longer the world’s tallest building, or even the city’s tallest, it proudly wore the title of World’s Tallest Building from the day it opened in 1931 until it was relegated to second place with the coming of the first of the World Trade Towers in 1972. With the completion of the second tower in 1973, it dropped to third place. The construction of the Sears Tower in Chicago has since dropped the Empire State Building another notch in the ratings.

None of this has diminished the affection people feel for the building. It still swells the breasts of New Yorkers and makes hearts beat faster, and it still attracts more than 2 million visitors a year. The building’s splendor and lift, its very being remains a magical presence, a cynosure for the city’s residents, a mecca for visitors. Language barriers and social inhibitions evaporate as tourists ask complete strangers to take their pictures in the Empire State’s lobby. Their joy is manifest, their obvious eagerness to record their visit for posterity breaking down all hesitancies. The stranger smilingly obliges.

People still go to the top to admire the view, they still snatch up little replicas of the building with thermometers stuck in the façades, they still marvel at the building’s power and glory. From its inception, that was the whole idea—the power and the glory. I don’t want to give away the plot, but titanic forces were at play in the building’s conception, design, and construction. Planned in the expansive twenties, it opened in the constrictive thirties. The building suffered, but it endured, and it endures still.

People felt comfortable with the building from the first time they saw it, as if the building had become a fast friend at first meeting. Praise for the building’s architects poured in from peers, press, and the public from opening day. “Its appeal to the layman is palpably enormous,” said The New Yorker. “In spite of Frank Lloyd Wright’s characteristically sweeping statement that our modern skyscrapers are all the same, we claim that this one is distinctly different, its difference and distinction lying in the extreme sensitiveness of its entire design.” Architects Shreve, Lamb & Harmon “endowed it with such clean beauty, such purity of line, such subtle uses of material, that we believe it will be studied by many generations of architects, a hazardous prophecy in these days of change.”

Just as the Empire State Building rose above every other structure in New York, so it towered over its competitors at the exposition of the Architectural League of New York in 1931. “No other work exhibited received more comment, either from laymen or members of the profession,” said The New York Times.

For his work, “for his masterful treatment of an office building,” architect William F. Lamb was awarded the Architectural League’s Medal of Honor in Architecture for 1931. The jury included architects Ely Jacques Kahn and John W. Root, Jr., and sculptors Adolph Alexander (A. A.) Weinman and Herbert Adams. Lamb insisted on sharing the honor with his partners, Richmond H. Shreve and Arthur Loomis Harmon, although both Shreve and Harmon gave Lamb full credit for the design from day one. Lamb had faced the necessity of meeting “the impossible demand for speed in construction,” Shreve said, and for that alone Lamb deserved the laurels.

The New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects awarded their Medal of Honor to the designers for 1931, given for “distinguished work and high professional standing.” The citation reads, “In the monumental design of a great office building they have made a genuine contribution to architecture. The noble simplicity of this outstanding structure makes it an inspiring landmark in our city.” According to Stephen F. Voorhees, president of the chapter and chairman of the jury, the award was not customarily based on work performed on any one building, but in this case the jury specifically recognized the accomplishment in the Empire State.

The Fifth Avenue Association awarded the Empire State Building its gold medal for design, which was “architecturally excellent from top to bottom.”² The association’s architectural committee, including architects Joseph H. Freedlander, Charles S. Peabody, and Chester Aldrich, was unanimous in its estimation of the Empire State Building’s worth, which spoke “eloquently of the high regard with which not only laymen but architects and builders view this great structure,” said Captain William J. Pedrick, the association’s president in 1931.

In 1955, the American Society of Civil Engineers selected the Empire State Building as one of the seven greatest engineering achievements in America’s history—the only wonder conceived, financed, owned, and managed by private industry.³

The Empire State Building was the biggest building anyone had ever known and one of the most pleasing aesthetically, and in all likelihood the building would have received laurels on its own merits. But carefully placed press releases from the day former governor Al Smith held a press conference in 1929 to announce the building’s coming resulted in one positive news story after another. Its size and scale could not be readily put into perspective, so its promoters sought a way. The building was immediately billed as the Eighth Wonder of the World, with the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World faring poorly in comparison. A later generation of owners continued the hyperbole with claims that more people visited the Empire State Building in a single year than visited the original Seven Wonders throughout recorded history. For the lobby floor’s north aisle, in 1963 they commissioned eight “original artworks” depicting the seven original wonders plus the eighth. The endurance of the Empire State Building sets it apart from the ancient wonders. Of the seven, no trace remains of four of them, a few fragments remain of two of them, and only the Great Pyramid remains, although it is missing some of its top stones. The Eighth Wonder remains in all its glory, and then some.

In 1931, Washington Star writer Israel Klein included the building as one of the seven wonders of the new world. He thought the Empire State represented “the climax of skyscraper construction” and placed it in a league with the flood-prevention work on the Mississippi, with Boulder Dam, the two-hundred-inch telescope for Mount Wilson Observatory, the electrified Cascade Tunnel system in Washington, the Panama Canal, and the George Washington Bridge. A story in a 1958 issue of Holiday magazine compared the building to both modern and ancient wonders: If the Eiffel Tower were piled atop the great pyramid of Cheops, the writer claimed, the Empire State Building would exceed their combined height by thirty-eight feet.

The Empire State Building is the twentieth-century New York building. The Chrysler Building might be glitzier, Lever House might be a purer example of modernism, and two of the city’s most banal buildings might be taller. But for the true heartbeat of a New Yorker, it’s the Empire State Building.

It became an instant icon for the city and its age. In 1931, a Macy’s shop window exhibited the history of men’s clothes from 1812. Saying that “clothes follow the demands of progress,” the window dressers backdropped each style with a symbol for its age. The iconographic chronology began with City Hall and ended with the Empire State Building.

The construction job was celebrated on Broadway the week the building opened in May 1931. Major Edward Bowes celebrated the construction of the building in a stage show at the Capitol Theater that he believed ranked as more than a great complement to Marion Davies’s Cosmopolitan production, It’s a Wise Child. In a special series of sets designed by Arthur Knorr, the production told the story of the rise of the Empire State Building in music, dance, and pantomime. Beginning with the barren site and working up through the various stages of girders pushing their way upward to form a new skyline for Manhattan, the production ended with a dirigible moving across stage.

The Short Line Motor Coach Service, whose local bus terminal was in the Dixie Hotel on Forty-third Street, used the image of the building on the cover of its New York schedule (Philadelphia was represented by its City Hall; Washington, D.C., by the Capitol Building). The New York Central Railroad used the building in posters advertising its Saturday excursion fares to the city. The copy plugged the building as the city’s latest attraction and urged passengers to visit it on their trip to the Boston Braves–Brooklyn Dodgers game at Ebbets Field or to the Giants–Philadelphia game at the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan.

When the Museum of the City of New York opened its doors on Fifth Avenue in 1932, a diorama by Dwight Franklin showed the erection of the Empire State’s steel framework, a scene that remained on view until the early 1990s and is probably etched as deeply in the minds of New York kids as the image of the bare-breasted Indians at the American Museum of Natural History was to Holden Caulfield.

The substantive facts of the building strain credulity in their enormity and precision. According to one of the Empire State’s architects, Richmond H. Shreve, a wind blowing at 4,500,000 pounds pressure would be required to knock it over; the building was vertical to within five-eighths of an inch; its weight was 365,000 tons, but its great load was distributed so evenly that the weight on any given square inch was no greater than that normally borne by a French heel. There are 10 million bricks in the building, 27 miles of main and counterweight rails used for the tracks of the elevators, about 200,000 cubic feet of Indiana limestone, and 6,400 windows. The completed building contains 37 million cubic feet. The 210 columns at the base support the entire weight of the building.

Some of these statistics might reinforce the commonly expressed fear that Manhattan Island would give way under the strain of supporting so many skyscrapers and would collapse into the surrounding waters. However, engineers point out that the city is built upon solid rock, and the great amount of stone removed in excavations is heavier than the completed skyscrapers. The stone excavated for the Chrysler Building, for instance, weighed twice as much as the building itself. Architect Shreve computed that the Empire State weighed no more than a forty-five-foot rock pile that might cover the site.

By virtue of its size, records were set up like standing dominoes and fell just as easily, and some of the records were taken very seriously by promoters. It ranked, for instance, as New York Telephone Company’s largest single installation, which the telephone company touted. In the building’s first stage of occupancy, about six thousand pairs of house cables and four thousand sets of wires to the central office were installed, as well as more than five thousand station telephones and more than three thousand trunk-line switchboards.

As the tallest building in the world, the Empire State Building was used as a yardstick for everything from Fleischmann’s yeast to great ocean liners. First, the ocean liners.

A custom had grown up in the early twentieth century of illustrating the latest queen of the seas stacked up against the reigning queen of the sky, with the Lusitania, for instance, illustrated standing bow-up next to the Singer Tower. Although the flack for the French Line did not depict the Normandie next to the Empire State to demonstrate the length of the 1,020-foot-long ship, at the ship’s launch in 1935 they claimed that if the ship were placed on Fifth Avenue it would stretch from Thirtieth Street to the northern side of Thirty-fourth Street, and, if stood on end, it would reach “almost to the top” of the Empire State Building (it still had 230 feet to go, or about another quarter, but who’s counting?).

In attempts at relating the height of New York skyscrapers, some foreign publications made legitimate comparisons with commonly known monuments back home. The London Daily Mail said in 1931 that the Empire State was nearly nine times higher than Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. (A multiple of the height of St. Paul’s Cathedral might have made more sense, but it was an honest effort.) And for years, The Michelin Green Guide to New York stacked the Eiffel Tower against the Chrysler Building, since the Chrysler Building was the first building taller than the...

Table of contents

• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• 1. The Building
• 2. The Skyscraper
• 3. Zoning the City
• 4. The Boom of the Twenties
• 5. The Odd Couple
• 6. The Firm
• 7. The Site
• 8. The Style
• 9. The Design
• 10. The Contractors
• 11. The Mooring Mast
• 12. Building the Building
• 13. The Opening
• 14. The Staff and Tenants
• 15. The Bust of the Thirties
• 16. The War
• 17. Since the War
• Epilogue: After 9/11
• BIBLIOGRAPHY