![]() What saved the skyscraper from failure were its height, which drew hordes of visitors every day who wanted to get to the terrace on the 86 th floor, and its growing fame, boosted by the movie King Kong, filmed in 1933. It is not therefore surprising that the building – intended for offices – remained mostly unoccupied in the early years, due also to competition from the nearby Rockefeller Center. It should be emphasised that, when work began on the building’s foundation, the United States was in the grip of the crisis of 1929. The fascinating history of the Empire State Building does not end with its construction. The Empire State Building in the history of the United States It was greeted with great enthusiasm: this wasn’t just the tallest skyscraper in the world but also the building with the greatest number of floors and the most speedily built. The then current president of the USA, Herbert Hoover, personally turned on the lights of the new skyscraper via a radio link from the White House. In attendance were the mayor of New York and the governor of the state of New York, that is, the future president of the United States, Franklin D. On, the official inauguration of the skyscraper was held. With such a large workforce, construction of the Empire State Building proceeded at a very fast pace and no other construction site in the world has ever equalled it: the skyscraper rose by four and a half floors a week and the works were completed in just 23 weeks. The construction site – assigned to the company Starrett Brothers and Ekin – employed around 3,400 workers, most of whom were Italian and Irish immigrants with a significant minority of native Mohawk people, chosen for their great sense of balance and insusceptibility to vertigo. ![]() Works to construct the Empire State Building began on 24 September 1929, starting with the demolition of the previous buildings. For that reason, it was decided to increase the final height of the skyscraper, reaching a total of 102 floors. ![]() But while the architects were designing the future Empire State Building, hundreds of workers were busy erecting the aforementioned Chrysler Building. Initially, the original plan envisaged the construction of an 80-floor building, enough to beat any previous record. Such speed was only possible because inspiration could be drawn from the other skyscrapers in the art déco style that the firm had designed in Cincinnati and Winston-Salem. The design of the Empire State Building was assigned to the firm of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon Associates, which managed to present the plan in the record time of only 2 weeks. In those years, a race had been underway to build the tallest skyscraper in the world and the accolade would soon be bestowed on the Chrysler Building in 1928, with a height of 1,046 feet. The hotel was demolished in 1929 and the entire lot was bought by a group of businessmen, including a former manager at General Motors and the former governor of the state of New York. On the site of the Empire State Building, the city’s first major hotel once stood, the Waldorf-Astoria, built in the nineteenth century by the Astor family. The story of the design and construction of the Empire State Building The first movie to use the Empire State Building as a backdrop was King Kong, followed by Sleepless in Seattle, An Affair to Remember, The Day After Tomorrow, The Avengers and so on. Registered since 1981 as one of the Unites States’ national monuments, it became even more famous through its many appearances in extremely well-known films. It is not by chance that it won first place in the ranking of the best loved buildings drawn up by the American Institute of Architects. Even more than its height, it has always been the beauty of this skyscraper that has astounded and fascinated people. The Empire State Building stands in the heart of Manhattan between Fifth Avenue and West 34 th Street. In 2001, after the tragic events of September 11, the Empire State Building temporarily reclaimed the title of the tallest skyscraper on the New York skyline, only to lose it again in 2013 with the completion of the One World Trade Center (which is 1,792 feet tall at the tip). The art déco style skyscraper was the tallest building in the world from 1931 to 1971, the year when it was surpassed by the construction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. The symbolic building of New York and, for a long time, the tallest skyscraper in the world: this, of course, is the Empire State Building, which rises to a total height of 1,454 feet.
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