John Jakob Raskob had convinced his boss, chemical czar Pierre S. du Pont, to buy controlling interest in General Motors in 1920. After instituting GMAC and revolving lines of credit to purchase an automobile, Raskob saw car sales soar, flooding the company with money, making the GM board of directors happy and the DuPont Corporation even richer.

But the political winds blew against him after the presidential election of 1928. The conservative Republican board and GM Chairman, Alfred P. Sloan, asked Raskob to resign because of his political work for anti-Prohibition groups and the liberal Democratic Party.

Pierre du Pont (left) and John Raskob (right) circa 1940s

Because his party had lost the presidential election to the Republican, Herbert Hoover, Raskob no longer had a political buffer from the corporate knives. Also, his friend and the Democratic candidate, former New York State Governor Al Smith, had just lost the presidency and needed a job.

Campaign buttons for Al Smith and Herbert Hoover, 1928

Competition

Though he was already wealthy, the merely 50-year-old Raskob wanted a challenge and coincidently to thumb his nose at GM. He had also nearly gone into business with Walter P. Chrysler and he had quietly learned that Chrysler wanted to build a height-shattering tower (opening in May 1930) on East 42nd Street for his own aggrandizement and as the company headquarters.

Together with Pierre and his cousin, Thomas Coleman du Pont, they joined Louis Kaufman and Ellis P. Earle to begin “Empire State, Inc.” and place Al Smith in charge of building the tallest building in the world.

Steelwork 1931

Assembling enough lots for a building to compete with Chrysler’s in the hyper-inflated 1920s would have been too expensive in the business cluster of Midtown Manhattan.

However, the unbuilt Waldorf-Astoria Tower – an office building designed by Shreve & Lamb planned for the site of the earlier outmoded hotel at 34th Street & Fifth Avenue and owned by Coleman du Pont – was big enough for the enormous footprint of New York’s Empire State Building. So the failed project for a 55-story loft tower became the 85-story Raskob project on the $16 million site.

Waldorf-Astoria Hotel disassembly, 1929

At the end of August, the president of Empire State, Inc., Al Smith, trumpeted the construction of the record-breaking building at 34th Street & Fifth Avenue. Of course, no one knew the stock market crash of October 1929 would change the real estate economics that left the tallest building in the world marooned far from Midtown’s business center as soon as it opened in the Great Depression.

Opening Day on 86th floor, May 1, 1931, looking south to Lower Manhattan

Architecture

Raskob had met the principals of Shreve & Lamb from their design of the GM Building in 1925. And Richmond H. Shreve and William F. Lamb had just recently added Arthur Loomis Harmon’s name to the firm fresh from his aesthetically successful setback skyscraper, 1924’s Shelton Hotel.

Among the three architects, the collaboration had already produced the stylistic forerunner of the Empire State with the 500 Fifth Avenue Building at 42nd Street. That brick clad tower would turn out to be a good appetizer (though it was being built concurrently) for the Empire State whose site was more than four times bigger than that for 500.

500 Fifth Avenue topped out, 1931

However, unlike the wild pastiche of the Chrysler Building built for the ego of one client, this new tower had to be more “commercial” and appeal to the many disparate companies that would rent office space in the projected $50 million building.

So its softer type of Modernism, similar to the more sober Shreve & Lamb-designed R.J. Reynolds headquarters in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, became more suitable to a wider number of people and also pointed the way to the later “Streamlined” form.

R.J. Reynolds Building in Winston-Salem, 1928-29

Shape

According to lore, Raskob held up a thick pencil to the architects, suggesting the building resemble it. The collaboration of the designers with the developer actually produced a simpler and more influential form for the next years than the theatrical vision of William Van Alen’s Chrysler Building. And using a vastly larger plot of 197.5 x 425 feet meant the symmetrical setback massing alone would act as the main exterior design motif of the huge tower.

Cross and longitudinal sections circa 1929

Even though Lamb was the designer of record, it was the organizational partner, Shreve, who suggested the choice that would make the building’s windows gleam in the sunlight: Instead of deep window recesses giving modeling shade and a stage for window washers, the Empire State would place the windows flush with the Bedford Limestone face, thereby eliminating the expensive and time-consuming dressing of the stone’s sides. The windows could also be pre-fabricated with the shiny chrome-nickel steel mullions and gray Art Déco aluminum spandrels in one unit whose assembly could speed the construction.

Detail of windows at setbacks circa 2018

Speed

Since the developers needed to open the building in May 1931, Raskob and Smith looked for a general contractor who could build it quickly. Starrett Brothers and their partnership with Andrew J. Eken had managed to do just that for the construction of the 927-foot-high Bank of Manhattan at 40 Wall Street in 1928-29.

In a counter-intuitive move differing from the other construction firms interviewed, they announced they had no tools or supplies in stock as everything needed to be custom-made anyway for the project. They also proposed overlapping the trades to keep the building on schedule.

40 Wall Street circa 1930

In the end, after their selection, all the supplies ordered were later sold for a profit and credited back to Raskob. And when all the scheduling performed like clockwork, they were able to build four to eight floors a week.

Lewis Hine photograph: “View of the building from 34th Street & Fifth Avenue,” 1931

The Otis elevators would be housed in seven separate banks of 58 passenger and eight freight compartments that would service only 4 to 14 floors each, reducing wait times for the 15,000 to 40,000 people expected to fill the building each day.

Original passenger elevator doors circa 2019

Zoning

In an example of political regulations influencing the aesthetics of building, on June 2nd of 1916, zoning requirements proposed a “Setback Principle” for five separate districts and streets of varying widths that led to New York’s State Zoning Enabling Act of 1916.

In the business districts, an imaginary line in the center of each street was drawn diagonally up the building to a point of 25 percent of the development site. At that point, a tower could theoretically climb to any height.

Isometric drawing showing zoning allowance circa 1929

According to the Zoning Act, as long as they didn’t penetrate the imaginary line, the required setbacks of the building’s lower structure should be able to accommodate the square footage and elevator shafts of each floor.

However, as elevator shafts would consume more of its rentable floor space the taller it reached, it was only the physics and the monetary return of each tower that determined how tall it could be.

Preliminary plan for Empire State floors 46-60 circa 1929

Because 34th Street and Fifth Avenue are each 100-feet wide, and because the site is so large, the difference in the look of the Empire State’s setbacks are mainly aesthetic choices. But for this political reason, the 1916 zoning change is why New York City skyscrapers had a “Wedding Cake” look for 40 years.

“Wedding Cake” setbacks on 120 Wall Street circa 2000

Mooring Mast

The flat roof of the 85th floor at 1,050 feet made the building just two feet taller than the tip of the Chrysler Building spire. But Raskob assumed another skyscraper could eventually cut short the Empire State’s reign as the world’s tallest building.

Therefore, by December of 1929, he and Smith decided a 200-foot “mooring mast” for dirigibles would be just the flourish that would keep its record height and maintain the tower’s modern image in the newsreels.

Mooring mast construction circa 1931

Of course, it was the ultimate folly.

When actual dirigible engineers heard of the plan, its total unworkability of mooring a 1,000-foot airship in a gale force wind to single point at the top of a building was quite laughable. And expecting terrified passengers to disembark across a wobbly gangplank a quarter-mile over an urban canyon was too ridiculous to be believed.

Airship near mooring mast steelwork, 1931

Its visual symbolism, however, could not be overstated. The nickel steel rocket-shaped shaft rising from stainless steel wings gave the entire building a unique look of upward movement that a flat-topped tower simply couldn’t.

Goodyear Blimp in front of completed mooring mast circa 1930s

Construction

Building was formally started on March 17th, 1930, after the remnants of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel had been cleared away and hauled 15 miles out to sea in January. The excavation of 55 feet down to Manhattan Schist bedrock was not much deeper than that required for the Waldorf office tower but the underpinnings had to be drilled farther down.

Early construction, 1930

The concrete footings were laced with “grillage” invented for the Chicago School of Architecture’s Montauk Block in 1882. The first steel columns on those footings were outfitted with flanges (similar to fins) angling out to spread the weight of the columns above.

Lewis Hine photograph: “View of building rising to about 16 stories” (actually 21 stories), 1931

The upper floor design drawings were either unfinished or hardly begun when the first steel columns were placed. But together with clockwork timing of the fabrication of 60,000 tons of Pittsburgh steel, the delivery of 62,000 cubic yards of concrete from Upstate New York and the 200,000 cubic feet of blocks of Indiana limestone and granite just as it was needed would today be called “fast-tracking.”

Lewis Hine photograph of workers having lunch, 1931

Threading through each floor’s forest of columns was a loop of railroad tracks holding a hand-pushed cart delivering supplies. Among the heavy stone blocks, concrete buckets, and electrical materials were carefully stacked terra-cotta blocks to be built for the inside partitions.

Because the flanking city streets constricted the space, the fifth floor reinforced roof of the first setback, because of its huge size, was used as the principle staging site. However, the entire process was an extremely noisy affair as the teams of riveters for the steel skeleton provided the loudest and one of its most dangerous shows.

Lewis Hine photograph of crew attaching rivets, 1931

The “heater” threw each of his ten red-hot rivets toward the “catcher” 50-75 feet away. The “bucker-up” placed each one into the proper hole for the “gunman” to pound with a jackhammer of compressed air. And each move in this dance was repeated for every steel member to the top of the tower.

“Gunman,” “Bucker-up” and “Catcher” circa 1930

The structural steel frame mostly lifted piece-by-piece through the elevator shafts was delicately placed by acrobatic Mohawk Indian ironworkers in slippery leather soles. The enormous skeleton, without apparent fireproofing, reached the roof of the 85th floor in September with the mooring mast topped out by November 21, 1930.

Constructing mooring mast circa 1931

The choice of Starrett Brothers proved to be one of Raskob’s best decisions as the building’s construction came in at $41 million and a record one year and 45 days.

Construction circa 1930

Because of the Great Depression’s lower salaries for the vast army of 3,500 construction workers, happy to have any job at all, its cost wound up lower than the $50 million projected at the end of the 1920s. Construction of the $41 million dollar building started on March 17, 1930, and it was considered finished for tenants in the middle of April 1931.

Fifth Avenue entrance circa 1930s

Interiors

The cast-aluminum spandrels and 6,500 tomato-red window frames flush to the outside surface also allowed deeper areas of the interior for radiators, freeing the office floorspace. Also, the use of a serrated shaft and setbacks in the lower floors of the tower itself provided eight to twelve corner offices for higher rent.

Original office interior circa 1932

Though there were five street entrances, there was one four-story lobby on the Fifth Avenue side veneered in gray and beige Rose Famosa and Estrallante Marble. Its ceiling was an aluminum and gold leaf mural of stars, sunbursts, and gears.

Fifth Avenue lobby circa 2021

More subdued than the theatrical carnelian-colored marble lobby and exuberantly painted ceiling mural of the Chrysler Building, its more streamlined monumentality of various pastel marbles and stainless steel resembled either a vast ocean liner or the entrance to the tallest building in the world.

Its office corridors and upstairs elevator banks would have wainscoting and floor-to-ceiling panels of gray Hauteville and Rocheron marble.

Empire State Building elevator lobby circa 2013

One of the building’s first tenants was the subsidiary companies of E.I. du Pont Nemours & Co., leasing three floors in 1931. And when Pierre du Pont came to New York from Wilmington, Delaware, he used Raskob’s office of Georgian wood paneling and historicist furnishings on the 80th floor in a decorative anachronism for the modern skyscraper.

Southern side of completed building circa 1932

Publicity

Its construction proved irresistible to photographers and flacks alike. In 1930, a Smith-hired P.R. whiz employed sociologist and documentary photographer Lewis Hine to take dramatic shots of the men precariously balanced on the foreground beams against Manhattan’s skyline far below in the background. And in a subtle jab at its former height rival, the background of those photographs often showed the much shorter Chrysler Building.

Lewis Hine photograph: “Icarus,” 1931

Opening

Though the engraved lobby plaque claims it was finished by March 1st, 1931, the grand opening was actually on May 1st and newsreel footage was taken of the two small grandchildren of Al Smith pretending to open the building. However, the camera so distracted his granddaughter that only Smith’s slightly older grandson pulled the ceremonial ribbon from the doors.

Opening Day ribbon cutting, May 1, 1931

And pretending to stand on his own, New York State’s then-governor, the disabled Franklin Roosevelt, showed up for publicity shots on the 86th floor terrace. But Smith’s political nemesis, President Herbert Hoover, also pretended to remotely turn on the lights from the White House while hidden custodians on site actually flicked them on from behind the scenes.

Al Smith and Franklin Roosevelt on 86th floor on Opening Day, May 1, 1931

A writer not only marveled at the marble-clad lobby and view of rooftops from the tallest building built in a low-rise area of Manhattan but also sneaked onto the 55th floor where he found dirt-streaked windows and the real show (to him) of lewd graffiti a worker had drawn on the walls.

Window washers circa 1932

The same journalist also noted the increased traffic jams around the building he called totally unnecessary and that the country’s disastrous economic conditions were so poor, the skyscraper would remain a hard sell for potential office clients.

Fifth Avenue & 34th Street circa 1935

Depression

Despite the building’s grandeur and Smith’s touting of 34th Street & Fifth Avenue as being the intersection of New York’s business world, it was all P.R. hype. Yes, the public spaces were grand but the economic collapse of 1929 had eviscerated the rental market and its location was far from Manhattan’s business center.

Staged “Lunchbreak” during construction of the RCA building in Rockefeller Center, circa 1930

Even Al Smith had to later admit the building had only been 25 percent leased and by fall of 1931, it was being referred to as the “Empty State Building” by journalists. In spite of renting (at a presumed discount) to nine insurance companies and as many iron and steel offices, it housed what would be called today a business “incubator.” To underscore the era’s economic dysfunction, the entire 28th floor was subdivided into tiny offices for temporary, shared space sublet to individuals on a month-to-month rental.

34th Street, 1931

Symbol

As the continued construction of the U.S. Capitol dome was critical for the splintered country to see during the Civil War, the Empire State’s very expensive presence amid the financial catastrophe of the Depression was a highly important symbol of the hope of a more prosperous day.

Aerial view of construction, October 1930

It also served as the scenic background of several movies during its early life and a foreground stage climbed by a gigantic gorilla in 1933’s King Kong. That one cinematic event anthropomorphized the building in the public’s imagination.

In 1935, the management directed the building’s night janitors to turn on the vacant office lights in the desolate tower to fool the readers of a magazine article into thinking it was rented. The fact that the brilliant illumination above the 41st floor didn’t approximate the actually rented portions proved how desperate they were for the visual symbolism of success during the Great Depression.

King Kong atop mooring mast movie still, 1933

Despite its fame, it took another ten years to rent the upper floors of the skyscraper. The tenants suffered through World War II only to see another building tragedy near the end of the years-long conflict.

Building at night circa 1943

Crash

On a foggy Saturday morning of July 1945, a low-flying and fog-blinded Newark-bound B-25 bomber barely missed the top of the 500 Fifth Avenue building but hit the 79th floor of the Empire State dead center. A gasoline-fueled fire raced through several floors and an engine hurtled down an elevator shaft. Since the war with Japan was still raging, the first thought was that the city was being attacked.

July 28th crash of B-25, 1945

Fourteen people, mostly from the recently leased upper floors, had been gruesomely killed but the building remained structurally stable. In fact, its direct center hit was the best place for it to collide. With its high-strength steel cage, it was stronger in the center than on the corners.

B-25 crash aftermath, 1945

Revenue

1950 saw not only a fully leased Empire State Building but also the addition of a 222-foot television antenna built atop the mooring mast. It also witnessed the death of its original developer and majority owner, John Raskob. His children wasted no time in converting their asset into cash, selling their shares in 1951 to financier Robert L. Stevens and the Prudential Insurance Company of America in what by then was a very profitable building.

Television/Radio antenna circa 2019

The New York World’s Fair of 1964 was the impetus to bathe it in white spotlights at night. But the Bicentennial year of 1976 turned the now colorful red, white, and blue lighting of the top setback levels and mooring mast away from being a symbol of a great building into a gigantic signpost and symbol of another, more pedestrian idea, the sales tool.

Upper setbacks and antennas circa 2019

The 2012 installation of programmable LEDs has transformed its nighttime look into a cheaper-to-maintain and bigger revenue stream but it can’t diminish the building’s impact on Manhattan’s skyline.

Beacon light test 1956

Standard

The intersection of 34th & 5th can hardly be mistaken for farmland but being ten blocks to the south of the Midtown business district has preserved its visuals as a towering lone sentinel. And for 90 years, the Empire State Building has remained the one tower by which all other skyscrapers are measured.

34th Street & Fifth Avenue circa 2000

Though long-eclipsed by taller buildings in America as well as abroad, its very presence has become the definition of resilience from the Depression, the power of the United States and the re-affirmation of New York City as the new Rome.

86th floor outdoor observatory circa 1945

Stylistically, it replaced the ziggurat Art Déco with the Streamlining of Modernism in design. The Empire State Building still remains relevant as a comparison whenever a tall building is constructed, becoming the measuring stick for all new skyscrapers with pretensions of being “the world’s tallest.”

Midtown (foreground) and Downtown (background) circa 1935