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The Portraits of America: Empire State Building: The Museum of the City of New York
It is the world's most famous skyscraper, a gleaming Art Deco tower of steel, concrete and marble that is the enduring symbol of New York. Conceived by Governor Alfred E. Smith, the project commenced on January 22, 1930, less than two months after the Black Tuesday stock market crash, as America entered the beginnings of the Great Depression. Along with the revealing text, a wealth of archival photographs taken before, during and after construction illustrate the mammoth undertaking. Every image pays tribute to the steelworkers, riveters, stone masons and the thousands of other unsung heroes whose fearlessness and skill enabled the tower to rise in little more than a year's time, and gave birth to a legendary icon of American vision and ingenuity.
128 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 12, 2024
This book gives a wonderful descriptive history of the Empire State Building, which was built in midtown Manhattan at 34th Street and 5th Avenue during the Depression Era. Despite the 1929 stock market crash, plans to construct the Empire State Building were still scheduled to proceed. The new building was to be 1,250 feet high, with about 2.7 million square feet of office space.
The funding would come from John Jacob Raskob, a former General Motors executive and his financial backers.
Raskob hired the architectural firm, Shreve, Lab and Harman to complete the construction of the Empire State Building in 18 months. To meet demands for a quick completion, the architectural firm had windows and other items for the building constructed separately and brought to the building site ready for assembly. Additionally, delivery of materials, such as steel, cement and marble were arranged so that there was a minimum amount of assembly at the construction site. The new skyscraper would be built the same way as an assembly line would be conducted in producing cars.
About 3,439 men were employed at the site, working thirteen-hour days, commencing at 3:30 am., with a half hour lunch and ending their days at 4:30 p.m. Pay was low, less than two dollars an hour. Wages were paid once a week. Armed guards would be on site to protect the money and make sure the employees received what was due them.
Photographer Lewis Wickes Hines was hired to promote positive publicity of the building. He would often climb the steel frames to take photos. He captured some of the danger for the laborers, due to the heights they had to work on. Hines would take more than a thousand photographs. Six workers would get killed in the process of construction. But, since it was the time of the Great Depression, many had no choice but to take the risk of danger, the long hours and low pay, or face being unemployed. Many would get used to the heights. After construction, many of the men ended up back on unemployment due to the Depression.
The hard work paid off as the building was completed ahead of schedule just after thirteen months. Opening day would be May 1, 1931, and the Brooklyn Eagle called it “the House that Smith built.”
After the opening of the Empire State Building, it had a new problem. It was having trouble attracting long-term tenants. To bring in some revenue, the new rental manager, H. Hamilton Weber offered bargains on short-term weekly rentals for businesses that needed the space for temporary reasons. The 1933 movie, King Kong which cast the building as an important ingredient of its story was great for publicity. The company, Publicity Associates was hired by Smith to mail out more than 30,000 brochures featuring color photographs of top views from the building to railroad agents across the county to attract interest in the building. American Express clients were offered free visits to the Empire State Building’s observation deck. The publicity firm also used radio spots to advertise the building and in 1936, a 15-minute show called, “Microphone in the Sky” was broadcast 6 days a week from the 86th floor observation deck. This attracted the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) to lease half of the 85th floor as an experimental television and sound studio. But still, the building continued to have financial difficulties due mostly in part to the Great Depression.
Even before Pearl Harbor was attacked on May 7, 1941, the observation deck on the Empire State Building was used as a base by volunteers 24/7 to watch for enemy planes. This started in January 1941. After the Pearl Harbor attack, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia leased office space at a minimal cost to the federal government for some of its agencies. Now instead of looking like a tourist attraction, the building helped in the defense of the United States.
On Saturday, July 28, 1945, at 9:45 a.m., disaster struck when Lieutenant Colonel William F. Smith, Jr., accidentally collided his Army Air Corps B-25 bomber into the north wall of the Empire State Building between the 78th and 79th floors when attempting to land at Newark Airport. Somehow miscalculated by either pilot error or misguidance from air traffic controllers at the LaGuardia Airport, upon impact, the pilot Smith, Jr., two other crew members as well as eleven people working in the building were killed. Dozens of others would be injured. It was estimated that injuries and deaths could have been higher if the accident had happened on a weekday when thousands more would have been in the building.
The building, however, sustained no serious structural damage, but the cost of repair would be approximately one million dollars. Except for the damaged floors, the building would remain open the following Monday after the crash and individuals were still allowed to visit the observation deck. The Army made it then a policy disallowing its planes to fly over Manhattan.
In 1954, the building was bought by Colonel Henry Crown, an Illinois coal tycoon. He and Benjamin Sonnenberg came up with the idea of artificially lightening up the building. They also conducted media events by bringing in celebrities to the observation deck. New York City’s primary stations were all transmitting their signals from the skyscraper by the mid-1950s. Tenancy in the building was at 97% by the 1950s. It was upgraded by yet another new owner with air conditioning and high-speed elevators. An “Introduction to New York” exhibit was added to the lower floors to attract tourists before they went up to the skyscraper’s observation deck which was famous also for its views of the city.
After the New York City blackout on November 9, 1965, the skyscraper added an emergency lighting system and a recall system on elevators which would safely lower the elevator to the next floor and be able to be opened manually. This was to be prepared should there ever be another blackout.
In 1976, the building was lit up in red, blue and white lights to celebrate the country’s bicentennial. This began the tradition where the building’s lights would be changed to commemorate different holidays, such as green for St. Patrick’s Day. This helped make the building more popular for tourists and tenants.
The building went through an expensive modernization project in the 1990s, with upgrades to the fire and security systems, and new window frames and windows were added. Metal detectors and x-ray scanning machines would be installed after the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.
The building with its long history and survival through the Depression Era remains popular and prestigious.
The funding would come from John Jacob Raskob, a former General Motors executive and his financial backers.
Raskob hired the architectural firm, Shreve, Lab and Harman to complete the construction of the Empire State Building in 18 months. To meet demands for a quick completion, the architectural firm had windows and other items for the building constructed separately and brought to the building site ready for assembly. Additionally, delivery of materials, such as steel, cement and marble were arranged so that there was a minimum amount of assembly at the construction site. The new skyscraper would be built the same way as an assembly line would be conducted in producing cars.
About 3,439 men were employed at the site, working thirteen-hour days, commencing at 3:30 am., with a half hour lunch and ending their days at 4:30 p.m. Pay was low, less than two dollars an hour. Wages were paid once a week. Armed guards would be on site to protect the money and make sure the employees received what was due them.
Photographer Lewis Wickes Hines was hired to promote positive publicity of the building. He would often climb the steel frames to take photos. He captured some of the danger for the laborers, due to the heights they had to work on. Hines would take more than a thousand photographs. Six workers would get killed in the process of construction. But, since it was the time of the Great Depression, many had no choice but to take the risk of danger, the long hours and low pay, or face being unemployed. Many would get used to the heights. After construction, many of the men ended up back on unemployment due to the Depression.
The hard work paid off as the building was completed ahead of schedule just after thirteen months. Opening day would be May 1, 1931, and the Brooklyn Eagle called it “the House that Smith built.”
After the opening of the Empire State Building, it had a new problem. It was having trouble attracting long-term tenants. To bring in some revenue, the new rental manager, H. Hamilton Weber offered bargains on short-term weekly rentals for businesses that needed the space for temporary reasons. The 1933 movie, King Kong which cast the building as an important ingredient of its story was great for publicity. The company, Publicity Associates was hired by Smith to mail out more than 30,000 brochures featuring color photographs of top views from the building to railroad agents across the county to attract interest in the building. American Express clients were offered free visits to the Empire State Building’s observation deck. The publicity firm also used radio spots to advertise the building and in 1936, a 15-minute show called, “Microphone in the Sky” was broadcast 6 days a week from the 86th floor observation deck. This attracted the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) to lease half of the 85th floor as an experimental television and sound studio. But still, the building continued to have financial difficulties due mostly in part to the Great Depression.
Even before Pearl Harbor was attacked on May 7, 1941, the observation deck on the Empire State Building was used as a base by volunteers 24/7 to watch for enemy planes. This started in January 1941. After the Pearl Harbor attack, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia leased office space at a minimal cost to the federal government for some of its agencies. Now instead of looking like a tourist attraction, the building helped in the defense of the United States.
On Saturday, July 28, 1945, at 9:45 a.m., disaster struck when Lieutenant Colonel William F. Smith, Jr., accidentally collided his Army Air Corps B-25 bomber into the north wall of the Empire State Building between the 78th and 79th floors when attempting to land at Newark Airport. Somehow miscalculated by either pilot error or misguidance from air traffic controllers at the LaGuardia Airport, upon impact, the pilot Smith, Jr., two other crew members as well as eleven people working in the building were killed. Dozens of others would be injured. It was estimated that injuries and deaths could have been higher if the accident had happened on a weekday when thousands more would have been in the building.
The building, however, sustained no serious structural damage, but the cost of repair would be approximately one million dollars. Except for the damaged floors, the building would remain open the following Monday after the crash and individuals were still allowed to visit the observation deck. The Army made it then a policy disallowing its planes to fly over Manhattan.
In 1954, the building was bought by Colonel Henry Crown, an Illinois coal tycoon. He and Benjamin Sonnenberg came up with the idea of artificially lightening up the building. They also conducted media events by bringing in celebrities to the observation deck. New York City’s primary stations were all transmitting their signals from the skyscraper by the mid-1950s. Tenancy in the building was at 97% by the 1950s. It was upgraded by yet another new owner with air conditioning and high-speed elevators. An “Introduction to New York” exhibit was added to the lower floors to attract tourists before they went up to the skyscraper’s observation deck which was famous also for its views of the city.
After the New York City blackout on November 9, 1965, the skyscraper added an emergency lighting system and a recall system on elevators which would safely lower the elevator to the next floor and be able to be opened manually. This was to be prepared should there ever be another blackout.
In 1976, the building was lit up in red, blue and white lights to celebrate the country’s bicentennial. This began the tradition where the building’s lights would be changed to commemorate different holidays, such as green for St. Patrick’s Day. This helped make the building more popular for tourists and tenants.
The building went through an expensive modernization project in the 1990s, with upgrades to the fire and security systems, and new window frames and windows were added. Metal detectors and x-ray scanning machines would be installed after the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.
The building with its long history and survival through the Depression Era remains popular and prestigious.
December 6, 2011
This is a really interesting book. I attend college within the Empire State Building so it is always interesting to read about it. The information is very accurate and well written. The pictures are amazing!!
Worth reading if you are interested in the history of the Empire State Building
Worth reading if you are interested in the history of the Empire State Building
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews