Quote:
Originally Posted by austlar1
This is probably an unpopular point of view on SSP, but I don't think super-talls have the same cultural relevance today that they enjoyed in decades past. The Empire State Building has been iconic since the days of King Kong. It became the tallest building in the world at a time when that seemed to be something important. It is the one building in NYC that is instantly recognizable to the most people both in the US and abroad. These new super-talls aren't especially recognizable to anybody other than knowledgeable locals or true skyscraper enthusiasts.
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Totally. It is the holotype for "skyscraper".
To think that it was completed in 1931 and still ranks among the world's tallest buildings is amazing.
Personal anecdote: when I lived in NYC, I overheard tourists on more than one occasion refer to it as the "tallest building in the world". Obviously, they weren't the type of people who care about/pay attention to these things, but it always stuck with me... how it is so strongly identified with being the world's tallest, even though it's been a longer period of time (~45 years) since it was the tallest than its actual reign as the tallest (~40 years).