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  The Empire State Building, a 102-story Art Deco building in New York City, was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon Associates and built in 1930. The tower takes its name from the nickname of New York State. The American Society of Civil Engineers declared the Empire State Building as one of the modern Seven Wonders of the World. The building also belongs to the World Federation of Great Towers.
History and statisticsThe Empire State Building was the tallest building in the city before the construction of the World Trade Center, and was the tallest building in the world for many years. It is currently the 2nd tallest building in the United States (see the 50 Tallest buildings in the U.S. list). Its construction was hurried to completion, in order to take the title of "world's tallest building" from the Chrysler Building. The building rises to 1,250 feet or 381 m at the 102nd floor. A broadcasting tower added in the 1950s brings the total height to 1,455 feet or 443.5 m. The Empire State Building was officially opened on May 1, 1931. Much of the office space went unrented until the 1940s. This lack of inhabitance earned it the nickname "Empty State Building" in its early years. A public observatory at the top of the building offers impressive views of the city, and is a popular tourist destination. Floodlights illuminate the top of the building at night, in colors chosen to match seasonal and other events; they were red, white, and blue for several months after the destruction of the World Trade Center, then reverted to marking holidays.  The building weighs approximately 330,000 metric tonnes. The building has 6,500 windows, 73 elevators, and 1,860 steps to the top floor. Total floor area: 204,385 m2 (2,200,000 ft²) It is located at 350 Fifth Avenue, ZIP Code 10118, between 33rd and 34th Streets, in Midtown, Manhattan, directly across from Weehawken Cove, on the other side of the Hudson River. 1945 plane crashAt 9:49 a.m. on Saturday July 28, 1945, a B-25 Mitchell bomber accidentally crashed into the north side between the 79th and 80th floors, where the offices of the National Catholic Welfare Council were located. The fire was extinguished in 40 minutes. In the accident 14 people were killed. Empire State Building Withstood Airplane Impact (http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/News/News8-0112.html) Urban climberWithout warning, in 1994, French urban climber, Alain "Spiderman" Robert, using only his bare hands and feet and with no safety devices of any kind, scaled the building's exterior wall all the way to the top. The Empire State Building in pop culture Perhaps the most famous popular culture representation of the building is in the 1933 film King Kong, in which the title character, a giant ape, climbs to the top to escape his captors, and eventually dies by falling off of it. In 1983, for the 50th anniversary of the film, an inflatable King Kong was placed on the real Empire State Building. However, a mouse chewed through it one day, partially deflating the ape. He also needed a constant supply of air, and was never fully inflated. The observation deck was the designated site for romantic rendezvous in the films Love Affair and Sleepless In Seattle and a phony Martian invasion in an episode of I Love Lucy. An episode of the puppet science fiction series Thunderbirds involves an attempt to move the building on tracks to a new location. In the movie Independence Day, the building is destroyed by a gigantic alien ship. See alsoExternal links
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