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Empire State Building
  
 
We jumped up - well some of us started a little slower this morning -
as sprightly as a dodgy knee will allow. I had the choice today of tourist
attractions and settled for the Empire
State Building or ESB; the 102-story landmark in New York City, at
the intersection of Fifth
Avenue and West
34th Street. Its name is derived from the nickname for New
York, the Empire
State. It stood as the world's
tallest building for more than forty years, from its completion in 1931 until
construction of the World
Trade Centre's North Tower was completed in 1972. Following the destruction
of the World Trade Centre in 2001, the Empire State Building once again became the tallest
building in New York City.
Architecture: The Empire State Building rises to 1,250 ft at the 102nd
floor, and including the pinnacle, its full height reaches 1,453 feet–8
9/16th inches. The building has 85 stories of commercial and office space
representing 2,158,000 sq feet. It has an indoor and outdoor observation
deck on the 86th floor. The remaining 16 stories represent the Art Deco tower,
which is capped by a 102nd-floor observatory. Atop the tower is the
203 feet pinnacle, much of which is covered by broadcast antennas, with a
lightning rod at the very top. The Empire State Building was the first building to have more than
100 floors. It has 73 elevators and there are 1,860 steps from street level to the 102nd floor. It
has a total floor area of 2,768,591 square feet. The base of the
Empire State Building is about 2 acres. The building houses 1,000
businesses, and has its own zip code, 10118. As of 2007, approximately 21,000
employees work in the building each day, making the Empire State Building the
second-largest single office complex in America, after the
Pentagon. The building was completed in one year and 45 days. Its
original 64 elevators are located in a central core; today, the Empire State
Building has 73 elevators in all, including service elevators. It takes less
than one minute by elevator to get to the 86th floor, where an observation deck
is located. The building has 70 miles of pipe, 2,500,000 feet of
electrical wire and about 9,000 taps. It is heated by low-pressure steam;
despite its height, the building only requires between 2 and 3 psi of steam
pressure for heating. It weighs approximately 370,000 short tons. The
exterior of the building was built using Indiana
limestone panels. Unlike most of today's skyscrapers, the Empire State
Building features an art deco design, typical of pre–World War II architecture
in New York. The modernistic stainless steel canopies of the entrances on 33rd
and 34th Streets lead to two story-high corridors around the elevator core,
crossed by stainless steel and glass-enclosed bridges at the second-floor level.
The elevator core contains 67 elevators.
 
The lobby: An Art Deco masterpiece is three stories high and features an
aluminum relief of the skyscraper without the antenna, which was not added to
the spire until 1952. The north corridor contains eight illuminated panels,
created by Roy Sparkia and Renée Nemorov in 1963, depicting the building as the
Eighth
Wonder of the World, alongside the traditional seven. The lobby was recently restored to
the architects' original vision. On entering the Fifth Avenue entrance, there is
a brilliant ceiling mural of the celestial sky in 23-carat gold and aluminium
leaf. The lobby incorporates rare varieties of marble from Belgium, France,
Germany and Italy.
Opening: The building's opening coincided with the Great
Depression in the United
States, and as a result much of its office space went without being rented.
The building's vacancy was exacerbated by its poor location on 34th Street,
which placed it relatively far from public transportation, as Grand
Central Terminal, the Port
Authority Bus Terminal, and Penn
Station are all several blocks away. Other more successful skyscrapers, such
as the Chrysler
Building, did not have this problem. In its first year of operation, the
observation deck took in approximately 2 million dollars, as much money as
its owners made in rent that year. The lack of renters led New Yorkers to deride
the building as the "Empty State Building". The building would not become
profitable until 1950. The famous 1951 sale of The Empire State Building to
Roger
L. Stevens and his business partners was brokered by the prominent upper
Manhattan real-estate firm Charles F. Noyes & Company for a record
$51 million. At the time, that was the highest price ever paid for a single
structure in real-estate history. The Empire State Building cost $40,948,900 to
build.
Dirigible (airship) terminal: The building's distinctive Art
Deco spire was originally designed to be a mooring mast and depot for
dirigibles. The 102nd floor was originally a landing platform with a dirigible
gangplank. A particular elevator, traveling between the 86th and 102nd floors,
was supposed to transport passengers after they checked in at the observation
deck on the 86th floor. However, the idea proved to be impractical and dangerous
after a few attempts with airships, due to the powerful updrafts caused by the
size of the building itself, as well as the lack of mooring lines tying the
other end of the craft to the ground. Only one blimp was successful (and only
for three minutes). A large broadcast tower was added to the top of the spire in
1953.
The view we had toward the Hudson River
from the 102nd floor
Height records and comparisons: The Empire State Building remained the tallest
man-made structure in the world for 23 years before it was surpassed by the
Griffin
Television Tower Oklahoma (KWTV Mast) in 1954. It was also the tallest
free-standing structure in the world for 36 years before it was surpassed by the Ostankino
Tower in 1967. The longest world record held by the Empire State Building
was for the tallest skyscraper (to structural height), which it held for
42 years until it was surpassed by the North Tower of the World
Trade Center in 1973. An early 1970's proposal to dismantle the spire and replace
it with an additional 11 floors, which would have brought the building's height
to 1,494 feet and made it once again the world's tallest at the time, was
considered but ultimately rejected. With the destruction of the World Trade
Center in the nine eleven
attacks in 2001, the Empire State Building again became the
tallest
building in New York City, and the second-tallest
building in the Americas, surpassed only by the Willis
Tower in Chicago. It is currently the third-tallest, surpassed by the
Willis Tower and the Trump
International Hotel and Tower (Chicago). When measured by pinnacle height, the Empire State Building is also
the third-tallest building in the Americas, surpassed by the Willis
Tower and the John
Hancock Centre. Burj Khalifa also known as Burj Dubai, is a supertall skyscraper in
Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and is the tallest man-made structure ever built,
at 2,717 feet. Construction began on the 21st of September 2004, with the
exterior of the structure completed on the 1st of October 2009 - the building
officially opened on the 4th of January 2010.
 
Height comparison of buildings in New York City (under construction and existing) and
the world
Suicides: Over the years, more than thirty people have committed suicide from the top of the building.
The first suicide occurred even before its completion, by a worker who
had been laid off. The fence around the observatory terrace was put up in 1947
after five people tried to jump during a three-week span. On the 1st of
May 1947, 23-year-old Evelyn McHale leapt
to her death from the 86th floor observation deck and landed on a United Nations
limousine parked at the curb. Photography student Robert Wiles took a photo of
McHale's oddly intact corpse a few minutes after her death. The police found a
suicide note among possessions she left on the observation deck: "He is much
better off without me ... I wouldn’t make a good wife for anybody". The photo
ran in the 12th of May 1947 edition of LIFE
Magazine and is often referred to as "The Most Beautiful Suicide". It was
later used by visual artist Andy
Warhol in one of his paintings entitled Suicide (Fallen Body). On December 2,
1979, Elvita Adams jumped from the 86th floor, only to be blown back onto the
85th floor and left with a broken hip. On the 24th of February 1997, a
Palestinian gunman shot seven people on the observation deck, killing one, then
fatally wounding himself. No penny thrown from the top of the Empire State
Building has ever killed anyone walking below; The building has an updraft, so a
coin dropped from the observation deck would either be substantially slowed or
blown by wind gusts back up against the structure, where it would most likely
land on the 81st floor balcony.
Observation decks: The Empire State Building has one of the most popular outdoor
observatories in the world, having been visited by over 110 million people.
The 86th-floor observation deck offers impressive 360-degree views of the city.
There is a second observation deck on the 102nd floor that is open to the
public. It was closed in 1999, but reopened in November 2005. It is completely
enclosed and much smaller than the first one; it may be closed on high-traffic
days. Tourists may pay to visit the observation deck on the 86th floor and an
additional amount for the 102nd floor. The lines to enter the observation decks,
according to the building's website, are "as legendary as the building itself:"
there are five of them: the sidewalk line, the lobby elevator line, the ticket
purchase line, the second elevator line, and the line to get off the elevator
and onto the observation deck. For an extra fee tourists can skip to the front
of the line.
Communications devices for broadcast stations are located at the top of the Empire State
Building.
Broadcast stations: Broadcasting began at Empire on the 22nd of December 1931,
when RCA began transmitting experimental television broadcasts from a small
antenna erected atop the spire. They leased the 85th floor and built a
laboratory there, and—in 1934—RCA was joined by Edwin
Howard Armstrong in a cooperative venture to test his FM system from the Empire
antenna. Many changes occurred over the years until the World
Trade Center was being constructed, it caused serious problems for the television
stations, most of which then moved to the World Trade Center as soon as it was
completed. This made it possible to renovate the antenna structure and the
transmitter facilities for the benefit of the FM stations remaining there, which
were soon joined by other FMs and UHF TVs moving in from elsewhere in the
metropolitan area. The destruction of the World Trade Center necessitated a
great deal of shuffling of antennas and transmitter rooms to accommodate the
stations moving back uptown.
The Empire State Building Run-Up: is a foot race from ground level to the 86th-floor observation deck
that has been held annually since 1978. Its participants are referred to both as
runners and as climbers, and are often tower
running enthusiasts. The race covers a vertical distance of 1,050 feet
and takes in 1,576 steps. The record time is 9 minutes and 33 seconds,
achieved by Australian professional cyclist Paul
Crake in 2003, at a climbing rate of 6,593 feet per hour.
In popular 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 but falls to his death after being attacked by airplanes. In
1983, for the 50th anniversary of the film, a huge 90 foot tall inflatable King
Kong was placed on the building mast above the observation deck as a skyscraper
sculpture by artist Robert Keith Vicino. In 2005, a remake of King
Kong was released, set in 1930s New York City, including a final showdown
between Kong and biplanes atop a greatly detailed Empire State Building. (The
1976 remake of King
Kong was set in a contemporary New York City and held its climactic scene
on the towers of the World
Trade Center.) Also Love Affair in 1939, remade in 1957 as An Affair to Remember
and again in 1994 as Love Affair. 1964 Andy Warhol’s silent film is one
continuous, eight hour shot of the Empire State Building, shot in
black-and-white. In 1993, Sleepless in Seattle. The film Independence
Day features the Empire State Building as the focal point for the
aliens' attack on New York City. The building is destroyed in an extraordinary
explosion by the aliens' primary weapon, which proceeds to destroy the entire
city. Other films include Knowing, When Worlds Collide, The Day After Tomorrow,
Elf, Fail-Safe and many more. The deck was also the site of a Martian invasion
in an old episode of I Love
Lucy.
ALL IN ALL A SPECIAL PLACE TO BE ON MY
BIRTHDAY
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