1931
Empire State Building Dedicated
On this day in 1931, President Herbert Hoover officially
dedicates New York City’s Empire State Building, pressing a button from the
White House that turns on the building’s lights. Hoover’s gesture, of course,
was symbolic; while the president remained in Washington, D.C., someone else
flicked the switches in New York.
The idea for the Empire State Building is said to have been born
of a competition between Walter Chrysler of the Chrysler Corporation and John
Jakob Raskob of General Motors, to see who could erect the taller building.
Chrysler had already begun work on the famous Chrysler Building, the gleaming
1,046-foot skyscraper in midtown Manhattan. Not to be bested, Raskob assembled
a group of well-known investors, including former New York Governor Alfred E.
Smith. The group chose the architecture firm Shreve, Lamb and Harmon Associates
to design the building. The Art-Deco plans, said to have been based in large part
on the look of a pencil, were also builder-friendly: The entire building went
up in just over a year, under budget (at $40 million) and well ahead of
schedule. During certain periods of building, the frame grew an astonishing
four-and-a-half stories a week.
At the time of its completion, the Empire State Building, at 102
stories and 1,250 feet high (1,454 feet to the top of the lightning rod), was
the world’s tallest skyscraper. The Depression-era construction employed as
many as 3,400 workers on any single day, most of whom received an excellent pay
rate, especially given the economic conditions of the time. The new building
imbued New York City with a deep sense of pride, desperately needed in the
depths of the Great Depression, when many city residents were unemployed and
prospects looked bleak. The grip of the Depression on New York’s economy was
still evident a year later, however, when only 25 percent of the Empire State’s
offices had been rented.
In 1972, the Empire State Building lost its title as world’s
tallest building to New York’s World Trade Center, which itself was the tallest
skyscraper for but a year. Today the honor belongs to Dubai’s Burj Khalifa
tower, which soars 2,717 feet into the sky.