350 5th Avenue @ 34th Street
Architect: Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon
Date Constructed: 1931
Currently (2005) the tallest building in New York; 9th tallest in the world (as of 2004)
Height: 1,450 ft (444 m) including television antennae; 102 floors.

During the height of the building boom of the late 1920s, investors John Raskob and Pierre Du Pont decided to construct the tallest building in the world. The Empire State building was constructed in just eighteen months and was the world’s tallest skyscraper for more than forty years, from 1931 until 1972.

The building includes eighty–five stories of commercial and office space, with an observation deck on the 86th floor. A tower above the observation deck, which was originally built as a mooring mast for dirigibles (it was successfully used once!), adds another 16 stories. A 200–foot television antenna was added in 1953 bringing the total height of the building to 1,450 feet. The top of the building was sometimes obscured by fog, and in 1945 a low–flying B–25 bomber crashed into the seventy–ninth floor. Fortunately, the steel frame of the building held firm and only fourteen people were killed in the accident.
Even during its construction—shown beautifully in the photographs of Lewis Hine—the Empire State Building captured the imagination of all New Yorkers, and over time it became the most famous building in the world. Now, after the destruction of the World Trade Center, it is once again the tallest building on the New York skyline.