The Empire State Building – Seen from Broadway between 36th and 37th Streets, New York, New York

In the right and centre foreground is the 24-storey Herald Square Building, constructed in 1940. The Empire State Building is arguably the most iconic skyscraper ever built. With ground broken on January 22, 1930, the building took only a year and 45 days to complete. The architect, William Lamb, said his design was inspired by contemplating the shape of a pencil. At 102 stories and 1,454 feet, it was the tallest building in the world from 1931 until 1974; there are still only three buildings in the world with more floors.

The building was famously climbed by King Kong, the love stricken giant gorilla in the movie of the same name, and was a meeting place for lovers in the films "An Affair to Remember" and "Sleepless in Seattle". The mast on top was supposed to be a mooring tower for dirigibles, but the idea was abandoned after only one attempt due to chronically high winds. On July 28, 1945, a B-25 bomber flying through fog crashed into the 79th floor, killing 11 people.

This block on which the building sits was once the site of two mansions owned by the Astor family – the northern half was owned by Caroline (Mrs. William) Astor, whose annual parties literally defined New York society; the ballroom could hold 400 guests, and these "Four Hundred" were considered to constitute the "who’s who." The southern half held the mansion of her nephew, William Waldorf Astor, which inspired the fashion for mansard roofs.

Feuding over who had the right to be referred to as "Mrs. Astor," the nephew in 1893 replaced his house with the Waldorf Hotel, designed by Henry Hardenbergh, in order to spite his aunt. (Waldorf was John Jacob Astor’s hometown in Germany.) Caroline Astor responded by replacing her own home with the Astoria Hotel, also designed by Hardenbergh. The hotels were combined in 1897 to create the Waldorf-Astoria and a corridor was built to connect the two (though Caroline insisted on the right to re-separate the hotels at any time). The hotel catered to the super-wealthy: B.C. Forbes, of Forbes magazine, used to have a regular poker game there with Henry Clay Frick and other plutocrats. U.S. Steel was born at the hotel in 1901. The Waldorf salad was invented there in 1896, and Thousand Island dressing popularized; the Gibson and the Rob Roy were created at the Bull & Bear Bar here. In 1929 the hotel relocated uptown, and the Empire State Building was built on this site.


The original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel is pictured below: