Empire State Building Trivia
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50 free Empire State Building trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Empire State Building trivia for New York lovers, architecture fans and anyone who has stood in the Fifth Avenue lobby or watched Kong swat at biplanes from the top. This quiz covers the building's birth in the Depression-era race for the sky: John J. Raskob and Al Smith, the fifteen redesigns, the Chrysler Building's hidden spire, the Waldorf-Astoria that was demolished for the site, and the 410-day construction that ran four and a half storeys a week. It then covers the building's long life: the 'Empty State Building' years, the airship mooring mast that never worked, the 1945 B-25 crash and the elevator operator who fell 75 storeys and lived, King Kong, An Affair to Remember and Sleepless in Seattle, the coloured tower lights, the annual Run-Up, the observatories, the day it lost the world's-tallest title, and its own ZIP code. Questions range from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. If you enjoy this quiz, try our New York City, skyscrapers and famous landmarks quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many storeys does the Empire State Building have?
102
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.
Q 02In which architectural style was the Empire State Building designed?
Art Deco
The firm Shreve, Lamb & Harmon based the design on their earlier Reynolds Building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Q 03The building's name comes from the nickname of which US state?
New York
New York has been called the Empire State since at least the early 19th century.
Q 04How tall is the Empire State Building to its roof, excluding the antenna?
1,250 feet
With the antenna it reaches 1,454 feet; the Chrysler Building it beat stands 1,046 feet.
Q 05Which famous hotel previously stood on the Empire State Building's site?
The Waldorf-Astoria
The Astors sold it in 1928 and rebuilt on Park Avenue; the old hotel closed on 3 May 1929.
Q 06On which Manhattan thoroughfare does the Empire State Building stand?
Fifth Avenue
It occupies the west side of the avenue between 33rd and 34th Streets, with Macy's at Herald Square a block west.
Q 07How many times was the design changed to make sure the building would be the world's tallest?
Fifteen
Raskob feared Walter Chrysler might 'pull a trick like hiding a rod in the spire', so he added a crown and mooring mast.
Q 08On what date, St Patrick's Day, did construction begin?
17 March 1930
The building opened just thirteen and a half months later.
Q 09On what date did the Empire State Building officially open?
1 May 1931
President Hoover pressed a ceremonial button in Washington to turn on the lights.
Q 10How many days did it take to complete the building's structure?
410
It was structurally complete on 11 April 1931, twelve days ahead of schedule.
Q 11At their fastest, how many storeys per week did the builders erect?
Four and a half
Starrett Bros. and Eken aimed for a floor a day; the previous record for such a building was three and a half.
Q 12Which former New York governor and 1928 presidential candidate headed the company that built the tower?
Al Smith
Smith drove the final, solid-gold rivet himself; his 1928 campaign had been managed by financier John J. Raskob.
Q 13Which two skyscrapers were competing for the 'world's tallest' title when work began on the Empire State?
40 Wall Street and Chrysler
Q 21How much did the one million visitors who rode to the observation decks in 1931 each pay?
One dollar
The deck made about 2 million dollars that first year, as much as the whole building earned in rent.
Q 22Which 1933 film made the still-new building into a cinematic icon?
King Kong
A Kong balloon was strapped to the spire in 1983 for the character's 50th anniversary.
Q 23Which actress played Ann Darrow, the woman Kong carries to the top of the building?
Fay Wray
The film premiered in New York on 2 March 1933 to rave reviews for its stop-motion effects.
Chrysler's secretly assembled 185-foot spire, raised in October 1929, briefly leapfrogged 40 Wall Street.
Q 14How many workers officially died during construction?
Five
The Daily News reported 14 and a socialist magazine spread rumours of 42, but the official count is five.
Q 15Alongside Irish and Italian immigrants, many ironworkers were Mohawks from which reserve?
Kahnawake
The Kahnawake reserve is near Montreal; Lewis Hine photographed the men at work high on the steel.
Q 16Which photographer famously dangled from a derrick cable to document the ironworkers building the tower?
Lewis Hine
His images captured 'the dizzy work of building skyscrapers' as no one had before.
Q 17What did the building's facade get its blonde colour from?
Indiana limestone
The official fact sheet counts 200,000 cubic feet of limestone and granite, ten million bricks and 730 tons of aluminium and stainless steel.
Q 18Because so few offices were rented in the Depression, what did New Yorkers nickname the tower?
The Empty State Building
'Smith's Folly' was the other jibe; the owners made no profit until the early 1950s.
Q 19What was the spire originally intended to serve as?
A mooring mast for airships
Passengers were to board zeppelins from the 102nd floor; updrafts around the building made the idea impossible.
Q 20How much did the Empire State Building cost to build, including demolishing the old hotel?
About 41 million dollars
That came in well under the 60 million dollars budgeted, thanks partly to Depression-era prices.
Q 24What crashed into the north side of the building between the 79th and 80th floors on 28 July 1945?
A B-25 Mitchell bomber
The pilot, lost in thick fog after being diverted from LaGuardia, turned the wrong way past the Chrysler Building; fourteen people died.
Q 25Elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver survived a fall of how many storeys after the 1945 crash?
75
It remains the Guinness World Record for the longest survived elevator fall.
Q 26How many people were killed in the 1945 bomber crash?
Fourteen
Three crewmen and eleven people in the building died; the structure itself was undamaged.
Q 27In 1970 the Empire State Building was overtaken as the planet's tallest building by which structure?
North Tower of the Twin Towers
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.
Q 28The building's searchlights were first switched on in November 1932 to signal what?
Roosevelt's election victory over Hoover
Coloured lights for holidays and events began on 12 October 1977; LEDs capable of 16 million colours arrived in 2012.
Q 29The building's owners refuse to use the tower lights for what?
Advertisements
They will light up for the Knicks and Rangers, for holidays and even as a CNN election scoreboard, but never for ads.
Q 30Since 1978, runners have raced up how many steps in the annual Empire State Building Run-Up?
1,576
The course climbs 1,050 vertical feet from the ground floor to the 86th-floor observatory.