The fact that the Empire State Building is good-looking almost certainly was a contributing factor in its rise to fame. Sure, it was the tallest building in the world for more than 40 years – so far, longer than any other building since the modern skyscraper form began some 150 years ago – but if it were architecturally ugly, fewer people would care about it. Three photos from the New York Public Library’s Wurts Brothers collection give a sense of how it was seen when it was new. Forst, from 1930, a photo from diagonally across the street using a wide-angle lens:
The steel had been erected to about the main roof at the 86th Floor. The very dark area at the top os where there is only steel and temporary wood deck. The dark-gray area below that – where the white scaffold was hanging – is where floor construction was complete. The three progressively lighter shades of gray show the facade being built out in stages, starting with the stainless steel mullions that were shining in the sun further down, and the the facade assumes its normal appearance after the windows were installed, about halfway between the lowest scaffold and the next scaffold up. The exterior of the lower floors was pretty much complete, except for windows and some stone ornament at the base.
Here’s a long view in early 1931, with the exterior complete except for the spire, which did not yet have a skin at the top and was still surrounded by scaffold:
This angle makes clear one of the reasons Empire State grabbed people’s imaginations: it stood alone on the skyline. The big cluster of midtown skyscrapers, then, was from 40th Street north, and the Empire State’s 34th Street location had nothing remotely comparable.
Finally, the main entrance as seen from across Fifth Avenue:
The grand scale of the stone ornament was for passersby across the street or further away, not for people walking into those doors.
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