From the Archives
The ‘Race Into the Sky’ That Built the Empire State Building
The rapid 13-month construction time of the Empire State Building in New York City was featured on the cover of ENR multiple times in 1930 and 1931.
Photo: GG Vintage Images/Newscom
New York City’s Woolworth Building, at 792 ft, was the world’s tallest tower in 1929, but two skyscrapers under construction across town were in a dead heat to take the crown. One was 40 Wall Street, first planned to be 840 ft. The other was the Chrysler Building, originally intended to be 808 ft but then announced to be 925 ft. The owners of 40 Wall Street then raised the building height to 927 ft., while Chrysler architect William Van Alen was allowed to install a 125-ft spire. News media fanned public interest, calling it “The Race Into the Sky.”
The Chrysler Building topped out at 1,046 ft in October 1929, taking the world record, but not for long. Empire State Inc., a five-person partnership whose president, Alfred E. Smith, was New York’s former governor and the recent losing Democratic Party candidate for U.S. president, announced in August 1929 a plan to erect a 1,050-ft building, To be certain, it added a 200-ft metal “crown,” bringing the roof height to 1,250 ft, not even counting a 222-ft mooring mast intended to secure dirigibles.
The Empire State owners selected William F. Lamb, of architectural firm Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, as designer, Homer G. Balcom as structural engineer and Starrett Brothers and Eken as general contractor. Lamb’s design featured a five-story-tall base filling the 423-ft x 200-ft site on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, with an 81-story main shaft set back sharply to meet zoning requirements.
William A. Starrett, firm president, had overseen construction of numerous tall buildings, and during World War I had managed all U.S. Army construction work for the War Industrial Board. In 1928, he authored “Skyscrapers and the Men Who Build Them,” a history of tall buildings at the time and a comprehensive guide to building materials and planning required to complete them. Its most memorable line was “Building skyscrapers is the nearest peace-time equivalent of war.”
Starrett’s superior organizational skills were tested on the Empire State Building. It featured 57,000 tons of structural steel, vastly exceeding the 18,500 tons used for 40 Wall Street and 21,000 tons for the Chrysler Building, surpassing even the 38,000 tons used in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart, the world’s largest building by floor space up to that time.
A Hard Deadline
Image from ENR Archives
The owner insisted that Empire State Building be ready for occupancy by May 1, 1931, 18 months from its construction start. Architect Lamb was hired in September 1929. Design drawings and construction were concurrent. Steel drawings for the building were finished in mid-January 1930.
The project site was occupied at the time by the original Waldorf–Astoria Hotel, then the world’s largest hotel, with 1,300 rooms. Demolition began on Oct. 1, 1929, and excavation on Jan. 22, 1930. Two 12-hour shifts, consisting of 300 workers each, worked continuously to dig the 55-ft-deep foundation.
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Steel fabrication was handled by American Bridge Co. and McClintic-Marshall Co., both based in Pennsylvania. Steel members were shipped by rail to a supply yard on the New Jersey waterfront, then barged to an East River pier and trucked for the journey’s final leg. Steel was ordered one lift, or two floors, at a time, with just-in-time delivery, since there was no storage space on the project site.
Steel erector Post & McCord used an elaborate system of erecting derricks and relay derricks, powered by hoisting engines. The relay derricks, with 75-ft booms and 82-ft masts, were placed on platforms rigged out from the building face, to permit derrick lines to reach the street over the setbacks. Erecting derricks were carried up with the steel. Four of those were 20-ton capacity, while the other five, which had to erect the heaviest column sections, were 30-ton capacity. When the 23rd floor setback was reached, the four smaller corner derricks were dismantled while the five stronger derricks continued upward.
The hoists, with drums holding 3,500 ft of cable, incorporated a new safety feature—band service brakes controlled by levers to govern cable speed while lowering. Each erection derrick had a crew of nine, while 38 riveting gangs joined the beams and columns, each gang consisting of two riveters, a heater, a bucker-up and one or two helpers.
Trucks carried 16,000 partition tiles, 5,000 bags of cement, 450 cu yd of sand and 300 bags of lime to the site daily. Carts on a small railway system transported building materials from basement storage areas to the elevators, with added sets of tracks on upper floors set up to distribute materials where they were needed. Close behind the steel erectors and teams casting concrete floor slabs were interior finish crews installing plumbing, HVAC, electrical equipment, marble tiling, plastering, elevators, window frames, glazing and other interior finishes.
The building facade is composed of Indiana limestone, with windows separated by nickel-chrome steel mullions and connected by horizontal aluminum spandrels. Otis Elevator supplied 66 cars, capable of traveling 1,200 ft per minute.
A Fast-tracked Icon
Image from ENR Archives
The pace of construction was phenomenal. Foundation work began March 17, 1930, with the first upright piece of steel set on April 7. By June 20, steel had risen to the 26th floor, and by Sept. 19, steel had topped out at 1,048 ft—23 weeks after the start of construction.
The dirigible mooring mast topped out Nov. 21 and the building was completed on April 11, 1931, after 410 days. During July 1930, 22 stories of steel were placed in 22 working days involving regular hours and no night work.
The workforce peaked at 3,500 and included many Irish and Italian immigrants, as well as Mohawk ironworkers from the Kahnawake First Nations reserve near Montreal who were expert in working at great heights. Five workers died during the course of the project.
Key to project success was the rigorous monitoring system developed by Starrett. A robust team of inspectors roamed the site every day, recording the amount of work that was done. This information was summarized in a daily report and used to calculate the actual labor-unit cost for each portion of work, giving Starrett and his superintendent, John W. Bowser, near real-time indicators of progress or delays, so they could take steps quickly to avoid or fix problems.
A 1931 ENR article about wind design for 1,000-ft buildings discussed methods of analysis and the philosophy that emphasized sway resistance in addition to strength, as evident in designs of the Empire State Building and 40 Wall Street. Another 1931 article described how the building was outfitted with various instruments to measure wind stress, wind pressure and sway, collecting data for research by the American Institute of Steel Construction on effects of wind stress on tall buildings.
The building passed a shocking test of its strength in July 1945, when a B-25 Mitchell bomber airplane weighing 10 tons, with a 68-ft wingspan, crashed into its north side between the 79th and 80th floors at 200 mph during a period of heavy fog. One of the plane’s engines completely penetrated the building and landed in a neighboring block, while the other and part of the landing gear plummeted down an elevator shaft. The incident killed 14 people, but the building escaped severe damage and reopened two days later.
Considered an Art Deco masterpiece, the Empire State Building’s 86th and 102nd floor observatories draw 4 million visitors per year. The building, which underwent a major renovation that was completed in 2019, also serves as ENR’s current headquarters.
