50 Fun Facts About Empire State Building

How many storeys does the Empire State Building have?

Floors 1 to 85 hold offices, the 86th an observatory, and the 16 storeys of the spire are mostly mechanical, topped by the 102nd-floor observatory.

In which architectural style was the Empire State Building designed?

The firm Shreve, Lamb & Harmon based the design on their earlier Reynolds Building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

The building's name comes from the nickname of which US state?

New York has been called the Empire State since at least the early 19th century.

How tall is the Empire State Building to its roof, excluding the antenna?

With the antenna it reaches 1,454 feet; the Chrysler Building it beat stands 1,046 feet.

Which famous hotel previously stood on the Empire State Building's site?

The Astors sold it in 1928 and rebuilt on Park Avenue; the old hotel closed on 3 May 1929.

On which Manhattan thoroughfare does the Empire State Building stand?

It occupies the west side of the avenue between 33rd and 34th Streets, with Macy's at Herald Square a block west.

How many times was the design changed to make sure the building would be the world's tallest?

Raskob feared Walter Chrysler might 'pull a trick like hiding a rod in the spire', so he added a crown and mooring mast.

On what date, St Patrick's Day, did construction begin?

The building opened just thirteen and a half months later.

On what date did the Empire State Building officially open?

President Hoover pressed a ceremonial button in Washington to turn on the lights.

How many days did it take to complete the building's structure?

It was structurally complete on 11 April 1931, twelve days ahead of schedule.

At their fastest, how many storeys per week did the builders erect?

Starrett Bros. and Eken aimed for a floor a day; the previous record for such a building was three and a half.

Which former New York governor and 1928 presidential candidate headed the company that built the tower?

Smith drove the final, solid-gold rivet himself; his 1928 campaign had been managed by financier John J. Raskob.

Which two skyscrapers were competing for the 'world's tallest' title when work began on the Empire State?

Chrysler's secretly assembled 185-foot spire, raised in October 1929, briefly leapfrogged 40 Wall Street.

How many workers officially died during construction?

The Daily News reported 14 and a socialist magazine spread rumours of 42, but the official count is five.

Alongside Irish and Italian immigrants, many ironworkers were Mohawks from which reserve?

The Kahnawake reserve is near Montreal; Lewis Hine photographed the men at work high on the steel.

Which photographer famously dangled from a derrick cable to document the ironworkers building the tower?

His images captured 'the dizzy work of building skyscrapers' as no one had before.

What did the building's facade get its blonde colour from?

The official fact sheet counts 200,000 cubic feet of limestone and granite, ten million bricks and 730 tons of aluminium and stainless steel.

Because so few offices were rented in the Depression, what did New Yorkers nickname the tower?

'Smith's Folly' was the other jibe; the owners made no profit until the early 1950s.

What was the spire originally intended to serve as?

Passengers were to board zeppelins from the 102nd floor; updrafts around the building made the idea impossible.

How much did the Empire State Building cost to build, including demolishing the old hotel?

That came in well under the 60 million dollars budgeted, thanks partly to Depression-era prices.

How much did the one million visitors who rode to the observation decks in 1931 each pay?

The deck made about 2 million dollars that first year, as much as the whole building earned in rent.

Which 1933 film made the still-new building into a cinematic icon?

A Kong balloon was strapped to the spire in 1983 for the character's 50th anniversary.

Which actress played Ann Darrow, the woman Kong carries to the top of the building?

The film premiered in New York on 2 March 1933 to rave reviews for its stop-motion effects.

What crashed into the north side of the building between the 79th and 80th floors on 28 July 1945?

The pilot, lost in thick fog after being diverted from LaGuardia, turned the wrong way past the Chrysler Building; fourteen people died.

Elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver survived a fall of how many storeys after the 1945 crash?

It remains the Guinness World Record for the longest survived elevator fall.

How many people were killed in the 1945 bomber crash?

Three crewmen and eleven people in the building died; the structure itself was undamaged.

In 1970 the Empire State Building was overtaken as the planet's tallest building by which structure?

It had held the record for 42 years; after 9/11 it was briefly New York's tallest again until One World Trade Center passed it in 2012.

The building's searchlights were first switched on in November 1932 to signal what?

Coloured lights for holidays and events began on 12 October 1977; LEDs capable of 16 million colours arrived in 2012.

The building's owners refuse to use the tower lights for what?

They will light up for the Knicks and Rangers, for holidays and even as a CNN election scoreboard, but never for ads.

Since 1978, runners have raced up how many steps in the annual Empire State Building Run-Up?

The course climbs 1,050 vertical feet from the ground floor to the 86th-floor observatory.

The building is so large that it has its own ZIP code. What is it?

As of 2012 it was one of 43 New York buildings with a ZIP code of their own.

Which floors hold the building's observatories?

The 86th-floor deck has an open-air terrace and stays open every day of the year; the 80th-floor exhibits opened in 2019.

Roughly how many tourists visit the 86th- and 102nd-floor observatories each year?

In some years ticket sales bring in more money than the building's office rents.

Which company built the building's original 64 elevators?

The order for 66 cars running at 1,200 feet per minute was the largest elevator order ever placed at the time.

Andy Warhol's 1965 film Empire, a silent black-and-white shot of the building, runs for roughly how long?

It has since been added to the Library of Congress's National Film Registry.

Which 1993 Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan romance famously ends atop the Empire State Building?

It nodded to An Affair to Remember (1957), in which the lovers also plan to meet at the top.

The American Society of Civil Engineers named the building one of the Seven Wonders of what?

The American Institute of Architects also ranked it first on its 2007 list of America's Favorite Architecture.

The Empire State Building was made a National Historic Landmark in which year?

New York City had already designated the building and its lobby as city landmarks in 1980.

Which financier drove the Empire State Building project and added a spire to beat the Chrysler Building?

Raskob had made his money at General Motors and neither he nor Al Smith lost money in the 1929 crash.

Experimental television broadcasts began from the building on 22 December 1931 by which two companies?

The world's first FM transmitter was also installed there, though disputes ended that arrangement within a year.

In 1961 Lawrence Wien, Harry Helmsley and Peter Malkin agreed to buy the building for how much?

The land underneath was sold separately to Prudential Insurance for 29 million dollars.

As of 2014 the building was owned by which company, chaired by Anthony Malkin?

A 550-million-dollar renovation from 2010 replaced the mechanically operated elevators with automatic ones.

Architect William F. Lamb based his initial design on his firm's earlier building in which city?

The Reynolds Building was the model; Lamb was also inspired by Raymond Hood's Daily News Building.

Raskob feared the Chrysler Building's owner might 'pull a trick' by hiding what in its spire?

The fear prompted a final December 1929 revision adding a 200-foot crown and a mooring mast.

Alongside Raskob, which industrialist primarily financed the Empire State Building?

James Farley's General Builders Supply Corporation supplied the materials and Starrett Brothers and Eken were the contractors.

How did President Herbert Hoover take part in the building's opening on 1 May 1931?

The building opened 45 days ahead of schedule; guests at the 86th-floor luncheon included Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In which decade did the Empire State Building finally break even financially?

By the 1940s it was 98 percent occupied, despite limited mass transit nearby at the time.

In 1991 Prudential sold the building to a buyer representing Hideki Yokoi, a hotelier who was at the time what?

He was jailed over the deadly Hotel New Japan fire in Tokyo; Donald Trump later partnered with him in 1994.

How much was spent renovating the building's public areas in a project begun in 2009?

About $120 million of that went to energy efficiency, and the gift shop moved to the 80th floor.

After 9/11, which building was the only one in the Americas taller than the Empire State Building?

One World Trade Center topped out in April 2012 to retake the New York title.