May 1, 1931: The Empire State Building Opens

May 1, 1931, 90 years ago: The Empire State Building opens in Manhattan, on 5th Avenue between 33rd and 34th Streets. It is the tallest building in the world.

The land had long been in the Astor family, which preceded the Rockefellers as New York's richest. In 1893, William Waldorf Astor opened the Waldorf Hotel on the site. In 1897, next-door, his cousin, John Jacob Astor IV, opened the Astoria Hotel. (John IV would die on the Titanic in 1912.)

In 1928, the Astor family, recognizing that the center of New York life had moved a bit uptown, decided to build a new hotel, and sold the property to Bethlehem Engineering Corporation. The old hotels were demolished the next year, and the new Waldorf-Astoria Hotel -- now "Waldorf Astoria New York" -- opened in 1931 at 301 Park Avenue, between 49th and 50th Streets, 7 blocks north of Grand Central Terminal (a tunnel would connect them for special guests, such as Presidents of the United States) and 2 blocks east of Rockefeller Center. At 625 feet, 47 stories, it was the tallest hotel in the world until 1963.

But it would be dwarfed by what would rise on its predecessor's site. Developer John Jakob Raskob (no relation to the John Jacob Astors) and Pierre S. du Pont (a cousin of Thomas Coleman du Pont, a major investor in the previous hotel) formed Empire State, Inc. The State of New York was officially known as the Empire State. The group wanted to build the tallest building in the world.

At the time, there was a mad scramble in the City. At the time, the tallest was the Woolworth Building, which opened in 1913 at 792 feet, 55 stories, at 233 Broadway in Lower Manhattan. A few blocks away, at 40 Wall Street, the Bank of Manhattan Trust was building what it hoped would be the tallest. But automaker Walter Chrysler was trying the same, at 405 Lexington Avenue at 42nd Street in Midtown, across from the Grand Central complex.

On May 1, 1930, the Bank of Manhattan Trust Building was finished: 927 feet high, 70 stories. But on May 27, Chrysler sprung a surprise: A spire, hidden within his Chrysler Building, emerged, and allowed his Building to become the world's 1st 1,000-foot skyscraper: 1,046 feet, 77 stories. 40 Wall had held the record for all of 26 days.

But Chrysler wouldn't hold the record for long, either. The original 1,050-foot plan for the Empire State Building was added onto, just in case Chrysler tried another dirty trick, like inserting a 6-foot rod up through the top of his spire. It wasn't just what the press called it, "The Race to the Sky": Essentially, it was a dick-measuring contest.

Excavation of the Waldorf-Astoria site began on January 22, 1930. Over 3,500 people worked on it, and 5 of them died. It was expected to cost $60 million to build, but it came in under budget: $40.9 million -- about $735 million today.

Running the corporation for Raskob and the rest was Alfred E. Smith, former Governor of New York, and the Democratic Party's nominee for President in 1928. His days as a "great man" over, he needed something to do. He wasn't crazy about the job.

The Empire State Building opened on May 1, 1931. It was 1,250 feet high, with an outdoor observation deck at the 86th floor, and an indoor observation deck on the 102nd floor. At the opening ceremony, Smith was outshone by his former friend, and replacement as Governor, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mayor Jimmy Walker also attended.

At one point, the official film of the event showed someone calling out, "Governor?" And FDR said, "Which one?" The only person not laughing at this was Smith. The feud between them would continue until Smith's death in 1944.

The top of the Art Deco masterpiece was intended as a mooring mast for airships, but it was never used as such, due to wind gusts providing a safety issue. And while the Great Depression hadn't yet started when construction did, by the time the building opened, things were pretty bad. They had difficulty renting space. It became known as the Empty State Building. (My grandmother, who was just short of turning 7 and living in Queens when it opened, told me this. A PBS documentary eventually confirmed the nickname.)

But in 1933, the film King Kong was released, helping to make the building a legend. The movie's climax showed the big ape taking Ann Darrow, played by Fay Wray, in his hand, and climbing up the side of the Empire State Building. Spoiler alert for an 88-year-old movie: World War I-era biplanes try to shoot him down. He grabs one and throws it down into the street. Eventually, though, the fusillades of bullets gets to be too much for him, and he tumbles down.

The 1976 remake would see him atop the World Trade Center, while the 2005 version would be set in 1933 and put Kong atop the ESB, both computer-generated.

Still, the Depression put an end to The Race to the Sky. No one wanted to build the next Empty State Building. Towers would still go up in New York, including Rockefeller Center, with its centerpiece at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, formerly known as the RCA Building. It is this building, not the Empire State, whose construction included the famous photo Lunch Atop a Skyscraper by Charles C. Ebbets (no relation to Charles H. Ebbets, the former Brooklyn Dodgers owner who built the ballpark that bore his name). But no new record was even threatened.

By 1936, the Depression had eased enough that the building was turning a profit thanks to its observation decks. On July 28, 1945, a B-25 bomber got lost in fog, and crashed into the north side of the building, between the 79th and 80th floors. There were 14 people killed, but the Indiana limestone of the building held, and everything reopened 2 days later.

In 1951, with the building finally becoming profitable, Raskob sold it for $51 million. In 1953, a TV and radio antenna was completed, extending the building's height to 1,454 feet. On October 19, 1970, after 40 years, the Empire State Building lost its title as the tallest building in the world, as the construction of the World Trade Center surpassed it.

In 1964, floodlights were added on the 72nd floor, so that the building could be seen from the New York World's Fair. Since 1976, the floodlights have had specialized colors for special occasions: Red and green for the Christmas season, green for St. Patrick's Day, blue and white for when the Yankees win a World Series, blue and orange for the Mets in 1986, and so on. When no special occasion is on, the lights are simply white.

Each night, those lights were shut off at midnight, when the observation decks closed. I developed a trick: At 11:59 PM, I would stand outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 42nd Street and 8th Avenue, and tell a tourist that I could turn off the Empire State Building. I looked at my watch, waited as it creeped up to 11:59:59, pointed my finger at the building, and said, "Zap!" And the lights went out, right on time at 12:00:00. A less scrupulous person would have offered bets on it. I never did. The look on the tourist's face was worth it.

After September 11, 2001, I realized the trick would now be in bad taste. In 2010, the 601-foot Eleven Times Square went up on the opposite corner, blocking the view of the Empire State Building from 42nd and 8th, so the trick became impossible, anyway. Eventually, the Empire State began keeping the lights on until sunrise.

In 1980, the U.S. Postal Service gave the Empire State Building its own ZIP Code, 10118. The World Trade Center also got its own, 10048. So did the Chrysler Building, 10174.

In 1995, Donald Trump bought 40 Wall Street, and, naturally, renamed it the Trump Building. On September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center was destroyed, and Trump called in to a news organization, bragging that he now had the tallest building in New York. Like pretty much everything Trump says, it wasn't true: It was now the tallest building in Lower Manhattan, but the Empire State Building was still taller.

I visited the observation decks a few times when I was younger, when the price of admission was just $20. Today, it's $42 for the 86th Floor Observation Deck, and $75 for the Decks on both the 86th and the 102nd Floors.

As of May 1, 2021, there are 14 completed buildings in New York City that are at least 1,000 feet high, as there is once again a building boom in Manhattan: 

1. One World Trade Center, 285 Fulton Street, opened 2014, 1,776 feet, 104 stories, tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, 6th-tallest in the world. The address "1 World Trade Center" used to belong to the North Tower of the old WTC. The South Tower was "2 World Trade Center."

2. Central Park Tower, 225 West 57th, Street, 2020, 1,550, 98, tallest residential building in the world.

3. Steinway Tower, 111 West 57th Street, 2021, 1,428, 84, known as "the world's most slender skyscraper."

4. One Vanderbilt, 1 Vanderbilt Avenue near Grand Central, 2020, 1,401, 59.

5. 432 Park Avenue (at 57th Street), 2015, 1,397, 85. Part of a section of 57th Street known as Billionaires' Row.

6. 30 Hudson Yards, 500 West 33rd Street, 2019, 1,270, 73. The Hudson Yards project might generate a lot of jobs and income for the City, but it's ruined the view of the City coming down the ramp heading into the Lincoln Tunnel. It even blocks the view of the...

7. Empire State Building, 350 5th Avenue, 1931, 1,250, 102.

8. Bank of America Tower, 1101 6th Avenue at 42nd Street, 2009, 1,200, 55. If you watched the TV show Younger, this building was used for exterior shots of the building that was home to Empirical Publishing.

9. 3 World Trade Center, 175 Greenwich Street, 2018, 1,079, 80. The address formerly belonged to the 1981-2001 Vista International Hotel/Marriott World Trade Center, adjacent to the Twin Towers.

10. 53W53, 53 West 53rd Street, 2019, 1,050, 77.

11. Chrysler Building, 405 Lexington Avenue at 42nd Street, 1930, 1,046, 77.

12. New York Times Building, 620 8th Avenue at 41st Street, 2007, 1,046, 52. Across from the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

13. One57, 157 West 57th Street, 2014, 1,004, 75.

14. 35 Hudson Yards, 532 West 33rd Street, 2019, 1,000 even, 72.

The World Trade Center officially opened in 1973, surpassing the Empire State Building. That was surpassed by the Sears Tower (now officially named the Willis Tower, but nobody calls it that) in Chicago in 1974. That lasted until 1998, when the Petronas Towers, another set of "Twin Towers," was built in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. They were surpassed in 2004 by Taipei 101, in Taipei, Taiwan.

And in 2007, Burj Khalifa opened in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It is 2,717 feet high, with 154 stories. But, like the Empire State did, it is having trouble filling its space, as Dubai hasn't really recovered from the 2008-09 worldwide recession. Saudi Arabia is trying to build the Jeddah Tower, with the intention of making it at least 3,281 feet high -- the world's first building to be taller than one kilometer. But construction was halted in 2018, with the tower only 1/3rd finished, and it hasn't come any closer.