[NYguy]

http://www.northjersey.com/recreatio..._Building.html

High and mighty: The Empire State Building

February 16, 2010
BY JEFFREY PAGE

Even with its 102 stories, 10 million bricks, 120 miles of piping, 6,500 windows and gross weight of 365,000 tons, the Empire State Building was completed in one year and 45 days.

As far as superlatives go, it's been a rough few decades for the Empire State Building. When it opened in 1931, it was the tallest building in the world at 1,250 feet — and it's been shrinking in rank ever since. Yet even during the years of dominance by the World Trade Center, and with the recently opened Burj Khalifa in Dubai (2,717 feet), people still flock to Fifth Avenue and 34th Street for a ride to the top of New York.

For one thing, the view from nearly a quarter mile over midtown remains jaw-droppingly spectacular.

For another, the Empire State Building is where King Kong made his last stand. No other tall structure in Shanghai, Taipei, Dubai or Blanchard, N.D. (home of a 2,063-foot television tower), can make that claim.

You can stand in one spot on the 86th-floor observatory of the Empire State Building and see North Jersey, the Jersey Meadows, the Hudson River, the high-rise condos of Bergen and Hudson counties, the George Washington Bridge, Central Park, the Chrysler Building, the East River, Queens and the Bronx just by turning your head slightly. And that's on an ordinary day. On a really sparkling day in winter, when the air is clean and thin, you can see 80 miles. That would be to Poughkeepsie in the north and Ship Bottom on Long Beach Island in the south.

...The Empire State Building stopped setting height records years ago, but visitors don't care. They still come at the rate of about 2 million a year. After all, that's not Nebraska down there.

It's New York – the one and only.