The Empire State New York
The Plan For The Building
The two men who decided to build the tallest building in the world had
never built anything before.
In 1928 Alfred E Smith, the governor of New York, was chosen
by the Democratic Party to run for president of the USA.
John J Raskob, national chairman of the Democratic Party, had been a
top executive at General Motors.
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Smith needed Raskob's money
and business connections during the election, and so chose him to manage the presidential campaign.
Smith campaigned to stop businesses from making children work long hours for very little money, and to pay compensation to workers laid off from their jobs. During the prosperous 1920s, most people didn't see the need for these changes. The election was won instead by the Republican candidate Herbert Hoover. Meanwhile, Franklin D Roosevelt had taken over as governor of New York, and Smith was out of a job. Raskob was in the same boat: General Motors had asked him to resign when he became chairman of the Democratic Party.
Both men were looking for something to do. They decided to build an office
building that would rival the Chrysler Building (the Chrysler car
company was General Motors' main competitor). Raskob would use his
money to get it started, and they would raise money from other investors,
such as Pierre du Pont, to build the tallest building in the world.
Smith and Raskob knew they wanted something big, but they didn't care
about beauty or design. They left that to their architects.
They hired the firm of Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, and William F Lamb was put in charge of the project. His design was partly influenced by the perpendicular style of another architect, Eliel Saarinen.
Lamb's wife has said since that her husband based most of his design on a simple pencil. `The clean soaring lines inspired him, and he modelled the building after it.'
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Lamb had to follow certain regulations when he was deciding on the shape of the building. The zoning laws for Manhattan said tall buildings had to get smaller as they went up, so that they didn't block all the air and light from neighbouring buildings. So Lamb designed a five storey base that filled the whole site and lined up with the buildings already there. He topped it with setbacks, or storeys that were set back from the base.
The future of the Empire State was suddenly thrown into doubt by a huge financial crisis. The Wall Street Crash of October 1929 came about in a wave of panic. Wall Street was home to the New York Stock Exchange, where people could make money by buying and selling shares, or stocks, in businesses.
The panic came when these investors all lost faith in the stock market at the same time. The effect of everybody selling at once was to make their shares almost worthless. Most investors lost their fortunes. Because of this, businesses failed all over the country, and many people lost their jobs. They could no longer buy goods and services, so the companies that provided them began to go bankrupt too, and had to sack their workers. The cycle of poverty known as the Great Depression began.
Luckily, Raskob had been careful with his money, and was able to turn the Depression to his advantage. The cost of employing people fell drastically. So many people needed jobs that it was easy to find labourers to work long and hard for low wages. Because of the Depression, the cost of building the Empire State, at under $25,000,000 (about £5,000,000 at that time), was half of what Smith and Raskob had expected.
The Empire State took only one year and 45 days to build, or 7 million man hours. This is still a record for a skyscraper of such a height. When it was completed, it stood 381 metres high. It had been given the slogan name for the state of New York, `the Empire State', and was soon to become the symbol for New York City.
On 1 May 1931, at 11.15 am, Alfred Smith gave his grandchildren the word: `All right, kids, get to it!' They needed his help to cut the red, white and blue ribbon across the main entrance of the building, but then the Empire State was officially open.
Extract from "Great Buildings The Empire State Building".Written by Gini Holland.
Wayland (Publishers) Limited, England. 1997.
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