The Empire State Building Was Built in Just 410 Days

Four hundred and ten days. From the seventeenth of March, 1930, to the first of May, 1931, New York put up the tallest building in the world: a hundred and two stories, twelve hundred and fifty feet, on the old site of the Waldorf-Astoria on Fifth Avenue. At its fastest, the steel frame climbed about four and a half stories a week, and the building opened on the exact day its owners had set more than a year before, under budget. This is the story of John Jakob Raskob and Al Smith, of the secret spire that made the Chrysler Building the tallest in the world for less than a year, of an architect who drew the design in about two weeks, and of builders who ran a skyscraper like an assembly line turned on its end: scheduled trucks, railway carts on every floor, steel from Pittsburgh set in the frame within days. It is also the story of the men on the steel, including the Mohawk ironworkers of Kahnawake, photographed by Lewis Hine a quarter of a mile above the street. And it is the story of what came after: a building opened into the Great Depression, nicknamed the Empty State Building, that did not turn a steady profit for nearly twenty years, and that held when a B-25 bomber flew into its seventy-ninth floor in the fog of July 1945. CHAPTERS 00:00 Four hundred and ten days 01:29 A hotel on Fifth Avenue 03:10 The race for the sky 04:32 Two weeks and a pencil 06:01 The crash 07:47 An assembly line in the sky 09:35 Four and a half floors a week 11:05 The men on the steel 12:59 Five men and a mast 14:25 The first of May 15:44 The Empty State Building 17:10 Fog 18:37 The hidden domino 20:11 The reflection SOURCES & IMAGE CREDITS All photographs are in the public domain, drawn from Lewis Hine photographs from the National Archives, The New York Public Library and The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Open Access); Library of Congress; 1945 International News Photos press photographs (public domain) via Wikimedia Commons. Full per-image credits are in the pinned comment. A NOTE ON THE NARRATION This video uses a synthetic (AI-generated) narration voice. No real person's voice is imitated or cloned. #EmpireStateBuilding #NewYorkHistory #GreatDepression