Herbert Hoover dedicates Empire State Building
On this day in 1931 President Herbert Hoover officially dedicates New York Citys Empire State Building and presses a button that turns on the buildings electrical lights.Hoover was not actually in New York for the dedication.The button he pushed was a symbolic one in Washington D.C.
someone else flicked the switches on in New York.Ironically one of the buildings biggest financial backers was former New York State Governor Alfred A.Smith who had run an unsuccessful presidential campaign against Hoover in 1928.At the time the Empire State Building at 102 stories and 1250 feet high was the worlds tallest structure.
Designed by Shreve Lamb and Harmon Associates it took one year and 7 million man hours to build but came in under budget at 40 million.The Depression-era construction employed as many as 3400 workers on any single day and was completed ahead of schedule.The Art Deco-style skyscraper was serviced by seven banks of what were considered at the time to be very fast state-of-the-art elevators.The new building imbued New York City with a deep sense of pride desperately needed in the depths of the Great Depression when many city residents were unemployed scraping to get by and saw only a bleak future ahead of them.
The grip of the Depression on New Yorks economy was still evident a year later however when only 25 percent of the Empire State Buildings offices had been rented.In 1972 the Empire State Building lost its standing as the worlds tallest building with the completion of the 110-story World Trade Center.(The World Trade Center itself only held the title for about a year.) When the World Trade Center was demolished by a terrorist attack on September 11 2001 the Empire State Building again became the tallest building in New York City.In 2004 the Taipei 101 building in Taipei Taiwan became the worlds tallest building at 1670 feet tall.This was overtaken by the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai in 2010.
