Empire State Building - Dirigible Mooring Mast
For a New Yorker, the Empire State Building is more than a skyscraper, it is a compass, a landmark, a touchstone. Although no longer the tallest one in the world, not even in the top fifteen, there is no building more iconic.
I have lived in New York City my entire life, I remember a trip to the top of the building when I was younger. It was a beautiful spring day, visibility probably fifty miles, way up to Bear Mountain. From the Observatory, the city lay beneath me, the grid pattern of midtown, the jumble of Greenwich Village, the horizon. I was struck by it’s interconnectedness, its density, the proximity we had to each other, it was what makes the city great. All man-made, constructed laboriously over time, and by plan, but I was looking at a great living, ever changing organism.
It was before the internet.
Now, years later I return, it’s late in November, before the influx of visitors for the holidays. On an evening walk I pass by the ESB, I remember news about the buildings five hundred million dollar upgrade. How it was being brought up to 21st century sustainability standards. I enter the lobby to see the beautiful art deco ceiling revealed for the first time in years, or since a horrendous dropped ceiling was put in place to mask the buildings decline.
I was hooked, I purchase a ticket to the Observatory on the 102nd floor, the buildings pinnacle, to stand where I had stood, in the place that I remember first falling in love with NYC. The lobby is empty, no one in the place but me and the security guards. I speed right to the top, to what was going to be the lounge for air-ship passengers. I touch the webs of steel that crisscross the room, the beams that would have taken the loads of the fifty ton airships struggling and pulling against the wind, they’re solid, connected, same as the granite that supports the tower, as the 550 million year old schist that the city rests upon.
I walk to the picture window and step up onto the small platform that allows you to see an unimpeded view of the city as if standing on a cloud. I grasp the brass handrail, it’s warm, alive, solid as rock, vibrating with the heartbeat of the building that defines this city. I stare out, falling in love all over again, standing on top of the world.
The Height of Sustainability
The Owners of the Empire State Building are Turning New York’s Legendary Skyscraper into a Model of Energy Efficiency
By?Sudip Bose | From Preservation |?March/April 2010?
http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/2010/march-april/height-of-sustainability.html
EMPIRE STATE BUILDING
The Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark Art Deco skyscraper in New York City at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. Its name is derived from the nickname for the state of New York, The Empire State. It stood as the world’s tallest building for more than forty years, from its completion in 1931 until construction of the World Trade Center’s North Tower was completed in 1972. Following the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, the Empire State Building once again became the tallest building in New York City and New York State.
The Empire State Building has been named by the American Society of Civil Engineers as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. The building and its street floor interior are designated landmarks of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, and confirmed by the New York City Board of Estimate.[8] It was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1986.[9][10][11] In 2007, it was ranked number one on the List of America’s Favorite Architecture according to the AIA. The building is owned and managed by W&H Properties.[12]
The Empire State Building is the third tallest skyscraper in the Americas (after two Chicago towers, the Willis Tower and Trump International Hotel and Tower), and the 15th tallest in the world. It is also the fourth tallest freestanding structure in the Americas. The Empire State building is currently undergoing a $120 million renovation in an effort to transform the building into a more energy efficient and eco-friendly structure.[13]
