One of Manhattan’s most iconic landmarks is the Empire State Building. I am currently visiting New York City, and it is certainly the landmark that has constantly been grabbing my attention. As I am on holiday, (and have spent several hours walking around the Met), I wanted to do a short post, and the best way to do this is to look at Manhattan’s most famous landmark.
Origins
From 1893 where the Empire State Building stands now, on Fifth Avenue, there was the Waldorf Hotel. Across the road was the Astoria Hotel, and together they formed the larger complex of the Waldorf-Astoria which, at the time, was the largest hotel in the world having well over 1,000 rooms. Fifth Avenue in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century was one of the wealthiest part of the city, and even today it is one of the wealthiest streets. During the First World War the nearby Park Avenue became the most desirable real estate in the city when the electric trains went underground and redeveloped as a residential area. With its central location and with picturesque views of Central Park this turned Park Avenue into the wealthy centre of Manhattan. After the death of the Waldorf-Astoria’s owner after the First World War the great hotel had begun falling into disrepair, so the owners opened a new hotel on the now more luxurious Park Avenue.
In 1928 the Bethlehem Engineering Corporation hoped to open an office bloc at the site of the Waldorf-Astoria, and proceeded to buy it for $1 million. This is the equivalent of $1,611,572 in 2022 money, but the Corporation could only afford to put forward $100,000 themselves. Instead, they got a loan, and reckless loan giving was one part in the looming crisis of capitalism. As the Bethlehem Engineering Corporation began tearing down the Waldorf-Astoria, the price of stocks was rapidly dropping as speculation had ramped up worth of stocks despite not having the capital to correspond to their worth. Soon enough, companies defaulted on their loans, including the Bethlehem Engineering Corporation. The Bethlehem Engineering Corporation decided to sell their plot of land to a new company, and soon after global capitalism collapsed in October 1929 with Black Friday.
The Empire State Inc. and Planning
A consortium had been founded to profit from the boom in skyscraper construction in New York City in the late-1920s called the Empire State Inc. – named so as the nickname for New York state was the ‘Empire State’. Part of the glitzy veneer of 1920s American capitalism was the skyscrapers which rose above the horizon in Manhattan, and the bigger the skyscraper the bigger the prestige. The Empire State Inc. wanted their skyscraper to match their prestige, and put big names behind their title to bolster support in their construction scheme. Al Smith, the former Democrat governor of New York and former presidential candidate, was made the company’s president, and was the one tasked with announcing the plan to make a new skyscraper. At 80 stories this skyscraper was going to be the largest in Manhattan and, by default, the world. Much planning had gone into it. Hiring William Lamb he was originally tasked with designing a 50 storey skyscraper, then they upped it to 60 storeys, and decided on 80 storeys. Whether the Daleks tried to add Dalekanium to the spire as part of a convoluted plot to create a new evolutionary stage for the Daleks or not, I could not find evidence for.
Despite the Wall Street Crash there was still a strong drive to build the skyscraper. Part of it was due to financial necessity – so much money had been put towards it that they needed it built to make the money back. The building of the skyscraper was seen as a way to kickstart the failed economy by creating jobs, encouraging production to make the various materials, and by offering venues for businesses to run when completed. However, this is very much still linked in with the capitalist mindset, and the specifically laissez-faire capitalism that dominated the 1920s meant that ‘business as usual’ continued despite the obvious flaws in that economic thinking. Prove that capitalism works by building the world’s tallest building when most of the country is unemployed and struggling to survive. People did buy into this – The New York Times excitedly discussed the potential strength of the building’s central location, vicinity to transit systems, and its simple grandeur
Construction and the Race into the Sky
Construction began in early March 1930 with the excavation of the site in order to start building. Even then, before they could do this Lamb was forced to redesign the Empire State Building several more times. Just before the Wall Street Crash, in what the media described as the ‘Race into the Sky’ there was a race to see who could create the tallest skyscraper in the world. The three main contenders were the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and 40 Wall Street (also designed by Lamb’s company). The Wall Street Crash whittled down the race to the three mentioned skyscrapers, and the three constantly had their designs changed so that they would be the tallest. Just before the Crash, 40 Wall Street had an extra hundred metres added to it, so the Chrysler Building was redesigned to be taller, have a spire, and have a domed roof to tower above its two main competitors. In retaliation, the Empire State got a spire, extra storeys, and was made wider to avoid the wind caused imbalances. 40 Wall Street reached the tallest first on April 1930, but only managed to hold that title for a month when the Chrysler Building peaked it. Then the Empire State would steal the title.
The Empire State Building was very rapidly built – it took just over a year for it to be completed. A key reason why was that it was built using Ford production lines. In the late-1800s and early-1900s Detroit’s Henry Ford had developed the production line – where workers work on one specific part of a product as a way to expediate construction – which revolutionised industrial capitalism. Soon enough the construction line had spread to other industries, where even Hershey’s became the first confectioner to use the production line. This was applied to construction, so the skyscrapers of New York soon bloomed over the Manhattan skyline like concrete dandelions. One worker would align girders, another would lay concrete, another would put bolts into place etc. It was so efficient that iron girders from Pennsylvania were still hot from the foundry when they were incorporated into the building. Of course, while efficient it was not ethical. The Red Scare of the 1920s had defanged trade unions, and it would take until the 1930s for them to become a fighting force again. As a result, unions were not radical, and often excluded non-white or immigrant labour. The Empire State Building was largely built by Italian, Irish, and Mohawk workers in very precarious situations. Modern safety equipment was non-existent, and looking at the expertly taken photos by Lewis Hine (famous for his investigative journalism which helped tackle child labour in the early-1900s) it must have been terrifying. Workers were arranged into groups, and if one was absent that group could not work, so that way accidents could be reduced. However, accidents regularly happened. At worst there were casualties – somewhere between 5 (according to the company) and 42 (according to The New Masses) people lost their lives building the Empire State Building.
Eventually, the Empire State Building came together, and by May 1931 construction had finished. It was truly a staggering feat of engineering. Over 3,400 workers on site at a time (at maximum that is); $40,948,900 to build (or over $571,000,000 in 2022 dollars); and 443.2 metres at its very highest. In what must have been aggravating to the owners of 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler Building, it was $60 million under budget and completed 12 days ahead of schedule. Not only that, its crowning spire was to have a practical use compared to the Chrysler Building’s ceremonial spire. It might sound stupid today, but in 1931 it was designed to be an airship docking station. Zeppelins were seen as the transport of the future, the mode of transport that would define the twentieth century as the train defined the nineteenth. It never came to pass, and the one attempt to dock a zeppelin ended with the spire breaking off, but it did serve a different function. Radio, and later television, would be broadcast through the Empire State.
After Opening
The art deco style, impressive height, and glamour of the Empire State made it an, almost, instant hit with those who could afford to see it. There were complaints – when it first opened the smog from the city meant that many people could not see the city’s landmarks from the top of the building, making its key selling point redundant. Plans to build even bigger than the Empire State also never came into fruition. The Great Depression had progressed and left many more impoverished, and building giant vanity projects was simply not economically viable. Even then, the Empire State remained a vanity project. While by the end of the Second World War around 98% of the offices were occupied, it took another decade for it to break even – two decades to make a profit, not very good for capitalists. During the war itself there was a fear of German bombs reaching Manhattan and the Empire State, although this never amounted to more than wartime propaganda (by the time of American entry into the European theatre Germany was struggling to bomb Britain nevermind hitting a target across the Atlantic). However, the Americans themselves, accidentally, bombed the Empire State – a B-25 bomber crashed into the building, killing fourteen, and the human loss of life was the most damaging thing. Within two days it had reopened.
I cannot discuss the Empire State Building without discussing one of the greatest movies of all time – King Kong. Released in 1933, it was one of the most ambitious and revolutionary movies of all time for its special effects. Mixing giant animatronics and expert stop-motion it pushed the boundary for what can be done in cinema. The cinematic marvels of Jurassic Park and Avatar were only possible thanks to King Kong. In the movie’s climax, the giant ape Kong, terrified after being taken to NYC climbs the Empire State before being shot down by planes. King Kong was an instant cinematic hit, and solidified the Empire State in mass media. From Sleepless in Seattle to Spider-Man PS4 to Elf, the Empire State Building has almost become a character itself.
Since 1970
It took until 1970 for the Empire State Building to lose its title as the world’s tallest building. The construction of the World Trade Center in 1970 meant that the Empire State Building no longer could claim the title, and it also lost many contracts with radio and TV channels. The taller WTC had already gave rise to questions about whether they would interfere with the Empire State’s channels, and this turned out to be an accurate prediction. Quickly, the Empire State’s channels jumped ship to the WTC. However, its long-standing as an office building and a tourist attraction meant that the Empire State remained in constant use. The destruction of the World Trade Center in the horrors of the 9/11 bombings meant that the Empire State once again became the tallest building in New York, but it no longer could claim the title of the tallest building in the world. By then the Sears Tower was the tallest in the US, and the Petronas Towers had become the tallest in the world. Writing in 2022 the Empire State Building stands as the fifty-fourth tallest building in the world, and the fifth in New York. However, the Empire State remains the most iconic of these buildings – when given the choice between going to the top of the Empire State or the current tallest building in New York (One World Trade Center) I chose the Empire State.
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