The Empire State Building: Renewing the Affair

I use the ESB as a landmark to know where I am when visiting NYC, but my one experience of visiting the observation deck was a huge disappointment. It was so crowded that those of us going all the way to the top had to walk the last 10 or 12 floors (can't remember the exact number) or wait in a long queue for the lift. And when you get there the view is obscured by wire fencing. Give me The Rock any day!! And you can take some great photos of the ESB from the Top of the Rock with no need to manoeuvre around wire.

Sorry, my last experience at the ESB was terrible. It was overpriced, crowded and the staff were rude. Not returning. Just a tall tourist trap.

Regarding the mooring mast, it was used once, albeit briefly, in 1931. The "canyon winds" pushed the tail up and that was the last attempt to use the mast. From AirSpace, April, 2003: That didn’t happen until September 1931, when a privately-owned dirigible docked for a mere three minutes, in a 40-mile-per-hour wind. “Traffic was tied up in the streets below for more than a half hour as the pilot, Lieutenant William McCraken jockeyed for position in the half gale about the tower 1,200 feet above the ground,” the Times reported in 1931. Read more at https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/docking-on-the-empire-state-building-12525534/#RX8xswkxIsOazFOq.99

For millions of visitors and admirers very year, the Empire State Building remains the greatest building in the most wonderful city, state and country in the world — an enduring symbol of hope, dreams and achievement! Congratulations to the owners on the completion of this Observatory improvement project.

The Empire State Building is the best representation of a project being built in a timely manner with outstanding advance planning as well as execution of construction. These days we can't even get highway improvements or building renovations completed in years. When faced with a ten-year road project where the contractors won't let go and the government oversight is either incompetent or corrupt, I say, "They built the Empire State Building in just over a year!!!". The building's web site has a couple of terrific live cam feeds that look amazing cast up on to a big screen, especially at sunset as the lights come up. Mostly though, this piece reminds me once again of how much I Love New York!!!

Hello James: Fantastic article. Truly appreciated. I know this makes little economic sense, but the mooring mast - which was in fact an afterthought and added at the late design stage - is so beautiful but has been molested by a sprouting web of cell towers, radio antennas, and TV antennas. I hope that at some point all of that technology will become obsolete, and finally removed so we can behold the original Art Deco masterpiece. That includes removing the radio tower which is no longer relevant for maintaining the “tallest building” moniker. Cheers, Jeff Pucillo

The view north from the ESB pictured here is disheartening. I love the idea of tall buildings, but those skinny slivers on 57th Street look just awful - out of proportion to the rest of the city. Not too tall -- too tall and skinny. They look insubstantial and like they're trying too hard, as if they wanted to be big and tall but didn't have enough material, so they decided to go skinny. What on earth, natural or otherwise, has that ratio of length-to-width? Nothing, and for good reasons. I think they've screwed up the skyline for the next several hundred years.

Wasn't the Chrysler Building the "city's first supertall building?"

I put a large stuffed monkey on top of my Christmas tree and had a half dozen planes wired around it in honor of the ESB and KK.

You MUST go at night to see the view. Pure magic!

The Empire State Building still defines NYC to me, but it was not the first supertall skyscraper. The Chrysler Building at 1,046 feet opened 11 months earlier. "For buildings above a height of 300 m (984 ft), the term supertall skyscrapers can be used..."

I made a birthday photo of ESB at it's 50th birthday with a few laser beams shooting from it's spire,in time that great view from our buildings rooftop has been taken away by all the new hotel and condo buildings in the Flatiron-MoMad district. A planned 64 story hi rise building planned for the corner of 29th street at 5th avenue on the same side of ESB no doubt will obscure the view for many downtowners .

On September 12, 2001, I was driving home from Canada. As I passed by in New Jersey, I felt disoriented. I then realized I had always oriented myself to Manhattan Island by its tall landmarks, the Twin Towers and the Empire State Building, which now stood alone. It was comforting, however, to see the Empire State still standing tall, and I'm so glad it's being renovated.

I have long loved this bldg. For a few summers in the early 1970s, I was lucky enough to get a summer job working as a maintenance worker in Local 32B in the ESB or “Empire” as we called it. I’ve polished escalators, swept many floors, climbed out windows to clean the setbacks, and changed paper in bathrooms. I met many honest hard working immigrants who were very nice to us summer help that enabled their vacations and they exhorted us to be good and stay in school. We played cards with them during lunch breaks for a quarter per hand and toasted the guys about to have a vacation with the standard line , “ I hope it rains every day!” During my final days there, someone showed how to climb out a ceiling hatch of the 102nd floor observatory and into the antenna space above it. On a clear sunny blue sky day, for a few moments, I was on top of NYC as helicopters flew across at the same level as me. I’ll never forget it.

As much as I can, I try and have my lunch at my favorite bench at Bryant Park. I sit there enjoying the purple flowers and the bees, enjoying my afternoon break. And I look up and I have a perfect view of the Empire State building. It stands right there, like the mountain that does not move. When I go home at night, after the insanity at work, the crazy commute and such, I tiredly take my keys out, and look back, and far over there, framed between the tall apartment towers, is the Empire State Building, bathed in the golden evening light. When I go for a walk at night, I can see it, standing tall right there, bathed in colors, or white. Sometimes I Google why it is green today and this and that tomorrow. Sometimes I get excited when it looks like the Irish flag, just to discover it is something else. My all time favorite was and will always be the Chrysler Building, which I can no longer see from my bench at Bryant Park due to a new tower next door, or from home due to new towers along the Hudson River. Feels like a friend left every time I look in that direction. I know it’s right there, but I can no longer behold its crown. The city grows, new towers show up that obscure what is already there. I guess that is the way it has to be. But to me none hold the magic of NYC like the Empire State Building, and the Chrysler Building, which to me are the crown jewels of my city. I hope they remain, for as long as our city does.

When I was growing up and visiting New York City, the buildings and everything seemed so big, so grand, so mysterious. As an adult, they've shrunken and the shroud of wonder has diminished. It is sad how we often lose our imagination and sense of wonder with adulthood. But for me the Empire State Building will always be a link to those childhood feelings and a reminder of how much imagination can achieve. I can't wait to see the new observatory!

What happened to that miniature empire state building (was it also a pencil sharpener?) that my grandma bought me when we visited there when I was a four or five year old in 1962? I vividly remember walking around both the 86th and 102nd floor, though I kinda think everything out there was grey. Afterward, it was over to FAO Schwartz for a Matchbox car...

Yes. Well. Good. I live next door and it has traces of the city I knew 80 years ago as an awakening child. But my reading of the NYT over recent years convinces me that it like Trump looks backward and uses that easy appeal as a basis for refusing to truly venture into possible futures. Our minds are wasted in this process. For our minds create everything and to focus them on the paltry indications that there is anything worth saving releases us from creating dreamed of wonders that will serve us better than the past has done.

I find Hudson Yards warm and cozy. I like the human scale of it and how beautiful all the skyscrapers looks. Each one has its one distinct personality. The Tressle is a wonderful sculpture where people can climb stairs up to the heavens. The shopping is so high brow mine won't come back down. The restaurants are some of the finest sustainability challenged in the entire city. The shed is an intimate and warm place to experience contemporary art with 3,000 of your closest friends. I love New York.

As a kid I can remember being at the base of the Empire State building looking up and counting the floors. (thinking I was going to find an error?) Manhattan's building forest is an amazing view. Growing up around all the tall buildings decades ago, other places I visited afterwards seemed kinda wimpy. Tend to skew one's view of other places. A salient point of this article is how quickly the Empire State Building was constructed and put into operation. Manufacturing productivity has improved with robotic systems and engineering improvements, but heavy infrastructure installation take longer and is more expensive. Wish that were not the case...

As a kid in the 1940's I remember playing hooky from P.S.67 in the Bronx and took the long subway ride on the I.R.T. to the 34th Street Herald Square station. I don't recall what it cost to ride the elevator to the 86th floor and up the spire to the 102nd floor. It couldn't have been very much money for a 10 year old kid to afford. Most readers probably have no idea what the I.R.T. referred to. My favorite "hangouts" were the Empire State building, 30 Rockefeller Center and and the fifth floor toy department at Macy's. What a time it was. The writer didn't mention that a B-25 Mitchell bomber crashed into the Empire State in the fog in 1945. This great building's structure was damaged and 14 people were killed but the structure's integrity was not compromised. We had just won a world war with the help of our allies and the life seemed more manageable then. Thanks for the great article and for the memories.

Well, it looks beautiful, but 18 years after 9/11, I just somehow have little desire to actually go up there myself, or to the other NYC aeries, being an eyewitness to the 2nd plane hit from the corner of 3rd Avenue and 6th Street.

I appreciate this celebration of the iconic building of New York. I travel to the city from Washington rather frequently, and my resentment of Hudson Yards has grown over the past couple years as I have fully comprehended how the new glass palaces have obliterated the view of the Empire State Building from New Jersey. The approach to New York from the west is not the same as it used to be. Harrumph.

What a joyful celebration this article is of what may be the most iconic commercial building in the world, and what a good reminder that there is immense value in reviving and preserving greatness instead of replacing it.

What?! $38 to see the exhibit - plus $20 to see the observatory deck? Come on. This is supposed to be for the public, but it's priced for millionaires. To see all the upgrades costs $480; that would be for billionaires.

Excellent article (Im salivating over the original architectural drawings and renderings). Can we please make sure no new buildings in this area obliterate the ESB from the skyline? The new Vanderbilt tower effectively removes the Chrysler building from the skyline that is visible from NJ...I find that to be unfathomable. What was going through that architect's mind when he allowed that to happen? People may protest that progress needs to happen, and pull out an old chestnut about Parisians not wanting the Eiffel Tower when it was constructed. But does anyone think Parisians of today would allow a skyscraper to block the Eiffel Tower from the skyline?