NEW YORK | The Empire State Building | 1,472' Pinnacle | 103 FLOORS | 1931

[ethereal_reality]

[ethereal_reality]

How long was it a bar I wonder? And did it have a cool name...like TOP OF THE WORLD or something.

[max1979]

I was wondering what is the furthest away that anyone can see the Empire State Building from and if anyone has any photos of it from very far away. I was wondering it would be possible to see the Empire State Building from the top of the Comcast Center in Philadelphia or vice versa, since they are somewhere over 80 miles apart (given clear weather)? If anyone is ever able to check this, please post a photo. Since the ESB has so many lights, I would expect it would be easier to spot. I have heard that pilots saw some of the ESB lights back in the 1960's from as far as 300 miles away or other people saw the lights as far as 60 miles away from the ground.

[NYguy]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

Looking at those plans, I didn't realize there was another observation platform above the enclosed observation deck, though it was probably never in use.

[NYguy]

StevieB44

[NYguy]

photographynatalia




Several seconds




dj mark dean




Shucker

[NYguy]

mashleymorgan




hmmm....

grsing



(Venice)

[mrnyc]

[TwinTowersForever]

I own these pics they were from my high school band trip.

[DamienK]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

Strange place for the passengers to disembark from - I would have thought it would be from the underside of the airship.

[Zapatan]

What a beast of a building, but it could use a makeover, especially on the mast, maybe put some nice new glass and maybe expand the deck to floors 87, 88 ect. below the mast... I also see an open air balcony aboue the 102nd floor, there are a lot of possibilities.

The 102nd floor is still open right?

Anyways, what's the actual highest occupied office floor in the ESB? Is it the 79th or the 85th, I've always wondered what was in those floors just below 86.

[JManc]

102nd floor is open to public but an open air balcony above it could be problematic due to safety and the radiation from all the telecommunications equipment.



the 85th floor and below are all office space.

[mrnyc]

yeah, but you didn't tell'em that now visiting the 102nd floor will cost you an additional $15 simoleons.

yep, they get you coming and going, folks!

[Duffstuff129]

Originally Posted by DamienK

Strange place for the passengers to disembark from - I would have thought it would be from the underside of the airship.

Funny story about that...

The architects had absolutely no idea what the were doing. They thought that people disembarked from the nose, and they completely forgot to take into account the winds up there. Needless to say, the mast was never used.

[NYguy]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

yeah, but you didn't tell'em that now visiting the 102nd floor will cost you an additional $15 simoleons.

yep, they get you coming and going, folks!

Just a few years ago it wasn't open at all. It's a very small space, and the observation deck is always crowded. I don't have a problem with people paying extra to go up the extra height. Otherwise, you'd be there all day waiting to go up because it's so small.

[vandelay]

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

The New York Times
September 23, 2009
Overhead, a Lobby Is Restored to Old Glory
By JAMES BARRON

Every day, people walk into Grand Central Terminal and look up at the vaulted ceiling over the main concourse, with its star constellations and zodiac signs. It helped make the station “a triumphant portal to New York,” in the words of one of its architects, Whitney Warren.

People who walked into the Empire State Building have done their looking up outside, craning their necks to see the top, 1,250 feet above the street. As they made their way to the observation deck, they had little reason to look up in the cathedral-like lobby.

Now there is something to look up at. The ceiling in the lobby has undergone a $12.5 million renovation that has brought back two shiny Art Deco murals that disappeared from view in the 1960s. They are to be unveiled on Wednesday.

The murals were left to deteriorate more than 35 years ago after being covered with white plastic panels and fluorescent light fixtures, which were the latest things for office buildings in those days.

Anthony E. Malkin, the president of Malkin Holdings, which owns the building, said the lobby had become “a real letdown,” in contrast with the lobbies of two other famous skyscrapers of similar age, the Chrysler Building and 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Mr. Malkin wanted the lobby to be more of a triumphant portal than a utilitarian passageway for tourists on the way to the observation deck and workers on the way to their offices.

So as part of a $550 million project to upgrade the entire building, Mr. Malkin and a team of architects and designers set out to make the lobby as impressive as it was when the building opened in 1931. Frank J. Prial Jr., an architect with Beyer Blinder Belle who worked on the lobby restoration, said the idea was “to take the most famous building of the 20th century back a few steps to prepare for the 21st.”

That made the murals a priority. Like the mural on the ceiling in Grand Central Terminal, the ones in the Empire State Building show the sky. But this sky was imagined when the building was on the drawing board in the 1920s, when assembly lines were humming and people dreamed of the ultimate symbol of the machine age: the car.

The sun and the planets on the ceiling look like gears and wheels and cogs.

“It’s like you’re looking inside a watch,” Mr. Prial said, albeit a giant watch. The murals cover more than a third of the square footage of a football field. Bill Mensching, a vice president of EverGreene Architectural Arts, which copied the originals, said they had 15,000 square feet of aluminum and 1,300 square feet of 23-karat gold leaf.

Because the original murals, designed by an artist named Leif Neandross, were damaged, reproductions were installed. Mr. Mensching said more than 50 artists, site painters and installers worked on them.

Despite the Wall Street crash in 1929, the murals’ design was unchanged for the building’s opening. The result, Mr. Malkin said, was a ceiling that “is not trying to find hope in the depths of the Depression — it was created before that. You don’t have that labor and toil and struggle feeling that you have in Rockefeller Center.”

In the 1960s, large acrylic panels showing eight wonders of the world were installed at eye level in the lobby: the seven wonders in the history books and — no surprise — the Empire State Building.

The panels were completed in 1964, in time for the World’s Fair, and remained in the lobby until last year, when the renovation team put them in storage. Mr. Prial said they would eventually be put in a ticketing area on the way to the observation deck. They were replaced by marble panels from as far away as Italy and as close as a warehouse in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The panels’ colors and patterns are strikingly similar to that of the original marble in the lobby.

Two other changes have made the lobby more faithful to the building’s original plans. The clock over the information desk in the Fifth Avenue lobby was replaced by what was originally called for: an anemometer, which measured wind speed where dirigibles were supposed to dock.

And then there are the two chandeliers beside the pedestrian bridges. They differ from the chandeliers shown in early photographs; those were taken out in the 1960s.

The new ones, based on the original plans, were fabricated by the successor to the company Neandross worked for when he designed the murals.

Why were the chandeliers that were planned never installed? “Our theory,” Mr. Prial said, “was they were in a hurry, they had to open, and they ran out and got two chandeliers.”

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

[ethereal_reality]

^^^ I read that article this morning in the newspaper, and I immediately wanted to jump on a plane and visit NYC.

That mural is beautiful. And I love how they replaced the clock in the lobby
with an anemometer to measure the winds for dirigible mooring.

[ethereal_reality]

Originally Posted by DamienK
"Strange place for the passengers to disembark from - I would have thought it would be from the underside of the airship."


I could be wrong, but I think the illustration is correct.
You have to remember the 'balloon' part of a dirigible is rigid (as opposed to a blimp)
and has cat-walks running from end to end with access to the gondola.



unknown

[NYguy]

comawe

[Evergrey]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091001/...building_china

Empire State Building lit for China, drawing ire

By MARCUS FRANKLIN, Associated Press Writer
52 mins ago




NEW YORK – Red and yellow lights shone from the top of the Empire State Building at dusk Wednesday, a tribute to communist China's 60th anniversary that protesters labeled "blatant approval" of totalitarianism and criticized as inappropriate for an icon in the land of the free.

The building is routinely lit with different colors to mark holidays and big events, but opponents questioned whether it's right to commemorate a sensitive political issue, particularly when China has such a poor human rights record.

About 20 supporters of Tibet, which China has ruled since shortly after communists took over in 1949, protested outside the building during a ceremonial lighting of a scale model inside the lobby. They chanted "No to China's empire; free Tibet now," and held signs reading, "Empire State Building celebrating 60 years of China's oppression."

Lhadon Tethong, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, called the lighting "outright, blatant approval for a communist totalitarian system."

"It's a great public relations coup for the Chinese state," Tethong said as tourists gawked at the protesters. "But on the other hand, it's sure to backfire because the American public and the global public will speak against it."

At the lobby ceremony, building manager Joseph Bellina called the lights a high honor and said he was proud of the relationship between "our countries and our people."

Chinese Consul General Peng Keyu, who pulled the switch on the glass-encased model, said he was "honored and delighted."

He said China's reforms of the past 30 years have led to greater openness and "tremendous change."

Keyu and Bellina didn't address critics and declined to answer questions.

Journalist and blogger Marc Masferrer questioned legitimizing a government that continues to repress its citizens' freedoms, including their access to media and the Internet.

"I don't think one of our great landmarks should be turned into a platform to honor a regime and a system responsible for as much tragedy and all the other things that come with a repressive system," he told The Associated Press.

Masferrer pointed out that this year is also the 20th anniversary of the violently crushed student-led movement in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The People's Liberation Army is believed to have killed hundreds, possibly thousands, of protesters.

Politicians united in their disdain.

Rep. Anthony Weiner, a New York Democrat, said the lights should not be used to pay tribute to what he called "an oppressive regime" with a "shameful history on human rights."

Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican, said it was "a sad day for New York."

"I am strongly opposed to it or any commemoration of the Communist Chinese revolution. It's one thing to acknowledge the government; it's totally immoral to honor it."

The lights atop the building, which is owned by W&H Properties, are often are changed. For example, Italian colors — red, white and green — commemorate Columbus Day, while green, white and orange are displayed for the India Day parade.

For the Chinese anniversary, the lights were to remain on through early Thursday.

___

Associated Press writer Deepti Hajela contributed to this report.