My purpse in this thread is to grasp at time past, if possible, in a fleeting way. Corrections and addenda are welcome, as always.
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It took only 45 years for skyscraper design to go from the humble Home Insurance Building to the Chrysler Building.
If the Chrysler Building is the Marilyn Monroe of skyscrapers, here is the Humphrey Bogart:
Empire State Building
Location: New York City
Completed: 1931
Height: 1,250 feet (102 storeys)
Claim to Fame: What can I say?
If you were to search the collective unconscious for the meme "skyscraper," this is likely the building that will be standing there, bathed in floodlights.
The very name of the structure speaks power. To look upon the Empire State Building is to forget about pyramids and pharaohs, cathedrals and choirs. The Parthenon becomes so many scattered blocks placed by a child. The Pantheon but a claustrophobic box for small, petty gods.
This building says 'Yes! Man can rule his domain and accomplish anything he sets his mind to.'
It's all the triumphalism that fascists spoke of, made real in stone, steel and concrete. But where those bastards smashed, crushed and destroyed, the triumph of the Empire State Building is that it attempts to gather the forces of all that is doable and thrust it skyward.
Work began on the Empire State building in March of 1930. The Depression was just beginning, so why not build an impossibly huge building? Why indeed not.
Empire State Building in 1933 as depicted in Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong
John Jacob Raskob (formerly a vice president of GM) decided to join in the skyscraper race after Chrysler announced in 1929 that it was constructing a monumental new headquarters, the height of which was being kept a secret until the building's completion. (It's amazing how lax city building codes were in NYC in the 1930s. A developer is told how many toilets his building must have today, and here they kept their designs secret!)
Not knowing exactly what height he had to beat, Raskob started planning his own building, and bought the land occupied by the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel at 34th Street and Fifth Avenue for $16 million. The hotel was demolished and ground was broken on the new tower in January 1930. Raskob hired Shreve, Lamb & Harmon to be the architects for his new building. It is said that Raskob pulled a thick pencil out of a drawer and held it up to William Lamb and asked, "Bill, how high can you make it so that it won't fall down?"
Raskob was not going to build anything but the tallest building in New York. The logic of the design was simple. Central shafts contain elevators and vertical circulation, mail chutes, toilets and public corridors. Surrounding these utility areas is a perimeter of office space 28 feet on each side. As the tower rises, the number of these central utility shafts is reduced. The Empire State Building is like a pyramid of utility space surrounded by a larger pyramid of office space. From the beginning, each "standard" storey was planned to be roughly 12 feet high, and the lobby on the ground floor would be three storeys tall. But how many storeys would it be altogether?
"We thought we would be the tallest at 80 stories. Then the Chrysler went higher, so we lifted the Empire State to 85 stories, but only four feet taller than the Chrysler. Raskob was worried that Walter Chrysler would pull a trick - like hiding a rod in the spire and then sticking it up at the last minute."
— Hamilton Weber, manager of the Empire State Building in 1931
At 80 storeys the Empire State would have been 990 feet tall. This would have beaten 40 Wall Street, but not the Chrysler Building, because history teaches us that Mr. Chrysler did have a trick up his sleeve.
At 85 storeys, the building would have stood 1,050 feet.
Not good enough. The cheese-eating surrender monkeys had a tower 1,063 feet tall (if you include the antenna), so why stop just 13 feet short of being the worlds tallest structure?
In the end, Raskob himself came up with the solution. After examining a scale model of the proposed building— the top of which (the 86th floor) was essentially a flat roof to accommodate an observation deck — Raskob said, "It needs a hat!"
Looking toward the future, Raskob imagined the Empire State Building could function as an airport for dirigibles. The tower was redesigned with a 17-storey airport terminal building complete with a "mooring mast," customs facilities, baggage claim areas and offices for airlines. This structure started at the 86th floor roof and extended the building to 102 storeys and 1,250 feet including the mooring mast. The idea was that passengers would disembark from airships and then take the elevator to the ground and be in Midtown Manhattan rather than landing out in New Jersey.
Construction of the Empire State Building began on St. Patrick's Day in 1930. Some 3,400 construction workers feverishly worked the site, sometimes adding several floors in one day. The Empire State Building was officially opened on May 1, 1931.
The Hindenberg flies past the Empie State Building on its way to Lakehurst, New Jersey on 1936
Status: The Empire State Building instantly became an icon of New York City, taking its place alongside the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty.
The Empire State Building was only two years old when it received its most famous visitor
As for the airport concept, only once did an airship dock at the mooring mast. In September 1931, a small dirigible made contact with the top of the Empire State Building. Dropping a long rope, a ground crew of three were able to catch the rope and hold onto it after struggling for half an hour. The dirigible was only able to stay moored for three minutes due to high winds created by the concrete canyons of Manhattan. The idea of having an airport at the top of the building was abandoned.
The sheer size of the Empire State Building compared to its closest rivals is apparent in the comparison chart I've prepared. It is just about as big as you can make a building while preserving the elegant lines of a classic facade. Raskob didn't just build the tallest building on Earth, he built the two tallest buildings on Earth and just 'forgot' to put a street between them. The Eiffel Tower suddenly doesn't look so massive anymore, does it?
The Big Five of 1931: Empire State Building, Eiffel Tower, Chrysler Building, Manhattan Trust Building (40 Wall Street) and the Woolworth Building
In fact, the building is larger than the Chrysler Building and 40 Wall Street combined. Being so huge, the Empire State Building had a hard time getting tenants in the Great Depression years, and earned the nickname "Empty State Building." The Building was not filled until the 1940s.
In July 1945 a B-25 bomber flying in thick fog accidentally crashed into the north side of the building between the 79th and 80th floors. One engine shot clear through the building opposite and another fell down an elevator shaft; 14 people were killed in the accident.
Manhattan at dusk, with the Empire State Building and the Chrysler building illuminated together