Empire State Building
THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING is the archetypal skyscraper, the one to which all others must inevitably be compared. Its silhouette of a broad, 197-by-425-foot platform; low, massed setbacks; free-standing tower; and romantic, winged spire can be recognized i
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FIFTH AVENUE
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SHREVE , LAMB
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HARMON ,
1931
h e e m pi r e s tat e bu i l d i n g is the archetypal skyscraper, the one to which all others must inevitably be compared. Its silhouette of a broad, 197-by-425-foot platform; low, massed setbacks; free-standing tower; and romantic, winged spire can be recognized in a thousand tchotchkes, from pencil erasers to key-chain thermometers. It is perhaps the ultimate example of the skyscraper as stadtkröne, the crown of the city, which derives from the tradition of the Gothic cathedral. The lobby is dominated by a marble panel with aluminum relief that depicts the Empire State with the sun rising behind its mast. But as the architectural historian Carol Willis makes clear in her iconoclastic book, Form Follows Finance, the renowned parti was determined as much by economic considerations as by architectural design. William Lamb, the chief designer, tersely summed up the plan he was given:
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The program was short enough—a fixed budget, no space more than 28 feet from window to corridor, as many stories of such space as possible, an exterior of limestone, and completion date of May 1, 1931, which meant a year and six months from the beginning of the sketches. The configuration of base, setbacks, and shaft was largely determined by the grouping of the elevators in the core, and the arrangement of floor space so that no office was more than 28 feet from a window, to maintain a desirable level of natural lighting. Again, Lamb presents the concept with admirable clarity: The logic of the plan is very simple. A certain amount of space in the center, arranged as compactly as possible, contains the vertical circulation, toilets, shafts and corridors. Surrounding this is a perimeter of office space 28 feet deep. The sizes of the floors diminish as the elevators decrease in number. . . . The four groups of high-rise elevators are placed in the center of the building with low-rise
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[ 1 ] A misguided army B-25 bomber struck the building on July 28, 1945, killing 14.
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groups adjoining on the east and west sides so that, as these drop off, the building steps back from the long dimension of the property to approach the square form of the shaft, with the result that instead of being a tower set upon a series of diminishing setbacks prescribed by the zoning law, the building becomes all tower rising from a great five-story base.
But we do not love buildings because they are efficient; we love them because they make us dream. Part of the Empire State Building’s allure is that it reigned so long unchallenged—42 years—as the world’s tallest building, into the age of jet travel and moon landings. The observatory is visited by 3.5 million people annually and was an important source of revenue during The construction statistics are stupendous: the lean rental years of the Great Depression, 10 million bricks, 1,172 miles of elevator cable, 2 when it was known as the “Empty State million feet of electrical wire, and 200,000 cubic Building.” The building did not turn a
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