Tuesday, May 25, 2021 – IMAGINE A PRODUCT……..IT WAS PROBABLY MADE HERE FROM FURS TO GLOVES AND MORE
TUESDAY, MAY 25, 2021
The
372nd Edition
From the Archives
BUILDING
THE EMPIRE STATE
BUILDING
IMAGE COUTESY MARCO LUCCIO (C)
Building the Empire State Building
Stephen Blank
OK. I admit it. I like the Empire State more than the Chrysler Building. Always have. So sue me.
I particularly like the Empire State’s history, standing on the foundation of two grand hotels – the Waldorf and the Astoria – built by feuding members of the Astor family.
The Astors acquired the land in the 1820s and redivided it among relatives until in 1893 William Astor, motivated in part by a dispute with his aunt Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor, built the Waldorf Hotel next door to her house, on the site of his father’s mansion at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 33rd Street.
Then the Astoria Hotel opened in 1897 next door to the Waldorf. A feud – throwing hotels at each other rather than bricks – but with shared tastes. Both hotels were designed by the same architect, Henry Janeway Hardenbergh (Hardenbergh also did the Plaza Hotel and the Dakota), both in the same “German Renaissance” style and both appealed to the same upper crust New York crowd. The hotels housed celebrated restaurants, huge ballrooms and glamorous suites. Famous dishes were invented in their kitchens (Waldorf salad, Eggs Benedict, Thousand Island dressing) and famous drinks (Rob Roy, Bobbie Burns) conceived in their bars.
Interesting and, we shall see, somewhat prescient, the Waldorf was initially a laughing stock with its large number of bathrooms, called “Astor’s Folly”, and appeared destined for failure.
Ultimately the two merged, creating the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel (the two parts connected by a long corridor, “Peacock Alley”). The combined hotel was the largest in the world and the second most valuable parcel of land on Fifth Avenue, after the B. Altman and Company Building site. Over the years, the grand hotel aged, competitors nipped at its heels, and its fame dwindled. In 1929, the site was sold to a property developer for approximately $16 million. The Waldorf-Astoria was by no means finished, however. It migrated to Park Avenue, with its own Peacock Alley (and the loveliest, most accessible restrooms in the City).
Meanwhile, in the late 1920s, a new passion swept the City. Who would build the world’s tallest building?
At the center of this storm was Walter Chrysler of the Chrysler Corporation. He wanted to build the world’s tallest building – not a monument to one of the largest auto firms in the world, but a monument to himself. Indeed, Chrysler paid for the building out of his own pocket, to provide a unique inheritance for his children, he said.
His rival was not the Empire State, which would come later, but rather the Bank of Manhattan Building at 40 Wall Street (now known as the Trump Building) whose architects intended to build up to 925 feet tall, 85 feet taller than the plan for the Chrysler Building. When Chrysler found out about 40 Wall’s plans he decided to add a surprise 186-foot spire to his building. 40 Wall finished construction first in April of 1930, celebrated for being the tallest building in the world, without knowing that they were about to be surpassed. Less than two months later, workers at the Chrysler Building hoisted 4 parts of the secret spire to the top and riveted them together in 90 minutes. At 1,046 feet high, the Chrysler Building became the world’s tallest building.
Not for long.
John J. Raskob of General Motors also aspired to build the world’s tallest building. A few months before the Chrysler Building was completed, Raskob purchased the Waldorf-Astoria site. Construction of the new building began in March of 1930 and moved quickly. The original drawings for the Empire State Building were finished in only two weeks. Starrett Brothers and Eken, the General Contractors, began excavation for the new building in January, even before the demolition of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel was complete. The company had pioneered the simultaneous work of demolition and foundation-laying a year earlier when building 40 Wall.
Despite the colossal size of the project, the design, planning and construction of the Empire State Building took just 20 months from start to finish. The contractors used an assembly line process to erect the new skyscraper in a 410 days. Using as many as 3,400 men each day, they assembled its skeleton at a record pace of four and a half stories per week—so fast that the first 30 stories were completed before certain details of the ground floor were finalized.
The Empire State Building was the first commercial construction project to employ the technique of fast-track construction, a common approach today but very new in the early 20th Century. This means starting the construction process before the designs are fully completed in order to reduce delays and inflation costs.
Less than six months after construction began the Empire State Building is 3/4 complete. NYPL Digital Gallery.
But would it be high enough to make it the tallest in the world? Not to be outdone by Chrysler, Raskob put a hat at the top of his building – a spire, making the Empire State Building a soaring 102 stories and 1,250 feet high. The tower was viewed as an image of the future, a mast as a docking port for ocean crossing dirigibles. Passengers would exit via an open-air gangplank, check in at a customs office and make their way to the streets of Manhattan in a mere seven minutes. It didn’t work. Winds near the mast rooftop prevented dirigible pilots from connecting to the mast. The airship plan was abandoned.
A postcard of the Empire State’s mooring mast and how it would work.
Notwithstanding this disappointment, the building was completed in May 1931 and became the world’s tallest building, a title it would hold for nearly 40 years until the World Trade Center was completed in 1970.
The Empire State and the Chrysler buildings differed in another critical way. The Chrysler Building was built privately by Walter Chrysler who wanted to boast a headquarters building in New York City despite the fact that his corporation was mainly based in and around Detroit. The Empire State Building, on the other hand, was built as a consortium between the New York State Government and private industry in an attempt to economically rejuvenate a part of midtown Manhattan that had never really taken off, and was an attempt to attract private industry to build more buildings in and around the new record-breaking tower. Raskob rounded up a group of well-known investors that included Coleman and Pierre S. duPont, Louis G. Kaufman and Ellis P. Earl to form Empire State, Inc. He appointed former Governor of New York and Presidential candidate Alfred E. Smith to head the group
But the Empire State Building was essentially a flop. Just a year after it opened to commercial office tenants, the New York Times named the Empire State Building the “Empty State Building” – echoing the earlier “Astor’s folly” on the same site. Little research had been done in advance to determine whether New York City needed another giant office tower at a time when the Great Depression was deepening, not to mention that at the time, the 34th Street location was a kind of no-man’s land – too far north of the Financial District downtown and too far south of the new heart of midtown which was quickly becoming the area between 42nd St and 50th Streets. Few tenants signed leases. Building management told employees to ride up and down the elevators during evenings and at night to turn lights on and off in empty offices to convince the public that the building had tenants throughout.
So the Chrysler Building was the more successful enterprise. Even in 1935, the midst of the Depression, tenants occupied 70% of the Chrysler, while the Empire State struggled with an occupancy rate of only 23% and only became profitable until after World War II when companies flooded Manhattan and space became scarce.
FYI: The Empire State Building will host its annual Run-Up this fall. This is the world’s first and most famous tower race, challenging runners from near and far to race up its famed 86 flights, 1,576 stairs. The fastest runners have covered the 86 floors in about 10 minutes. See you there?
Stephen Blank
RIHS
May 18, 2021
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Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Sources
http://www.constructioncompany.com/historic-construction-projects/empire-state-building/
https://www.thoughtco.com/the-empire-state-building-1779281
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