Episode notes
After developer Floyd Brown defaulted on plans for a 25-story office building on the old Waldorf Astoria site at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, a group including John J. Raskob, Pierre S. du Pont, and former New York governor Al Smith took over. They gave architect William F. Lamb of Shreve, Lamb and Harmon a 50 million dollar budget and 18 months from first sketch to opening. The 1916 zoning resolution forced the stepped setbacks, and a rule that no office sit more than 28 feet from a window kept the tower slender. Contractors Starrett Brothers and Eken ran the site like a vertical factory, with timed deliveries, rail carts on each floor, and prefabricated aluminum spandrels. At one point they raised 14 floors in 10 working days.
The builders ordered 18,000 psi steel when city code allowed only 16,000, and Mayor Jimmy Walker signed the new code on March 26, 1930, days before steel went up. The building opened May 1, 1931, after 13 and a half months, but the Great Depression left it the Empty State Building, with no profit until the early 1950s. In 1951 it sold to a group led by Roger L. Stevens for 51 million dollars, a record at the time, and King Kong and some 250 films made it a global icon.
- The 200 foot spire was built as a mooring mast for transatlantic zeppelins, and a blimp touched it briefly in September 1931
- Mohawk ironworkers caught hot rivets and walked beams without harnesses
- Its structural stiffness of 42 pounds per square foot exceeds the Willis Tower's 33
- In 1945 a B-25 bomber hit the 79th floor in fog, and parts reopened the next week
- It was the world's tallest building from 1931 until the World Trade Center's North Tower topped out in 1970