This took place at the museum of the city of new york and is a little over an hour. To introduce John Tauranac could take the entire evening. John writes on new york architectural history. His books include many subjects including the Empire State Building. His other books include new york from the air, with great aerial photography. Other books include in central new york. There are others. John teaches at nyus school of professional studies. This spring his course is designed an architecture of public transportation. He does tors for the city museum. We welcome and enjoy his tors. His First Published map was undercover map of new york published by new york magazine. He was reader of the 19 he was creator of the 1979 new york subway map. It also included manhattan block by block. John tauranac. [applause] mr. Tauranac greetings. Im going to start with a bit of a digression. I want you to know that im an old fan of this institution. What he think was my favorite thing in the museum of the city of new york when i was a kid . Not max. This. This was a diorama that showed construction of the Empire State Building. The museum was kind enough to dredge up a photograph so i could show it to you. We are here to talk about the Empire State Building. Youre going to ask why i am showing you this. This was the Empire State Building in 1895. I read about it in a book because the reporter stumbles on it. Recently i discovered that the reason i believe it was called the Empire State Building is on the southeast corner of broadway and bleecker street, there was a bank called the empire state bank. Whether they sponsor did i do not know, but it was called the Empire State Building. It was originally a loft building. Today it is not apartment house. It does have a vague relationship to the Empire State Building if you think about superlatives. The architects of these buildings were influenced in the 1890s by the colombian expedition in chicago. That threw in some new york tchotchkes for the building. There two most famous buildings wewrere on 6th avenue. They designed a Department Store in 1896. They also designed a Department Store on 34th street, macys. They belong in the same league with other architects. It was shreve, lamb and harmon that designed this building, the Empire State Building. So satisfying, despite the fact that it is an enormous building. 1,250 feet high. If youre one World Trade Center you would include the height of your antenna. There is something so satisfying about the Empire State Building. It has almost a human form to it. It has a logical beginning middle, and end. It is like a classical sonata form. And part of what is so satisfying about it is the upwards left of the building. You have the feeling that it is practically a rocket waiting to be launched. You could walk by and not be aware you are passing by what had been the worlds tallest building. In part because of the setback of the tower. Your skin is doing nothing to support you, you are supported by a skeleton of loans with muscle bones with muscle and cartilage holding it together. It is the same with the skyscraper. It is supported by a skeleton. It is a skeleton of steel. In the mid19th century structures started going up that were protoskyscrapers. This was the fire watchtower in not morris park. Imagine if you put bricks around this structure. Youd have a building. And the bricks would not have to be supporting the floors. When you look in the construction of the top of the Empire State Building. You will notice a great similarity between it and the fire watch tyra and morris park watchtower in morris park. If you had not put brick but glass, youd have gotten the Crystal Palace. The original was in london. A glass framed building. Here we are at the 1850s on 6th avenue. With the Crystal Palace. If you ghahad taken the same notion and put huge windows youd have gotten the building on broadway in broome street. The facade is doing nothing to support the structure of the building, it is just sitting there. The advantage of cast iron buildings was the great expenses of windows which allowed Natural Light to enter workspaces. I keep pressing buttons here. A radical breakthrough was in this building at cooper square. This is the cooper union. I am not touching this, believe me. Maybe i will do it manually. Peter cooper installed what in essence were rail rails to support this building. They are shaped like this. You elongate the lower bolt. You get this. A steel high beam. This is what makes skyscraper structure possible. When you talk about the walls of skyscrapers, they are not doing anything to support the building. Hears mafic here is manifestation of that. This is the flatiron building. If there were no wall and this was a loadbearing building it would fall down. You have to have water. We got water in 1842 when the reservoir open. You have to have a flushing system. Here we have the famous flush down wc made by mr. Craper. It is also convenient to have electricity. We started getting electricity in the early 1880s. There was a byproduct of electricity, steam. All the buildings north of park avenue are built over Railroad Tracks. There are no basement and places to put boilers. How do they heat the buildings . From coned steam a byproduct of electricity. Back to the Crystal Palace that tall structure on the left is the observatory. The tower was 315 feet high. People would look at the city. How did they get up there . An elevator. Alisha graves otis installed the safety elevator. The first one to house one in the city is the building on broom and broadway. Buildings started going taller and taller. This was the Equitable Life insurance building at 120 broadway. This was the first building where rents were higher the higher you had your office. It gave rise to the phrase high livers. The interior was made of rock iron beams wrought iron beams for tensile strength. The early 20th century, what you think happened to this building . It burned down. Equitable life probably rings a bell. Almost like a phoenix, from the ashes of this building went up this building. My machine has gone berserk. I apologize. Stop it [laughter] youve got me. Oh, we have somebody who understands these things coming to my aid. You dont have that plugged in . [indiscernible] todays Equitable Life insurance building went up in 1915 in rose 42 stories without a setback. I do not know what an acre means. I am told it is basically 200 by 200 feet. A block from 78 to 79th is 200 feet. Imagine if this building cast a shadow, that was the equivalent of two four blocks. That is a lot of shadow. People in the building were getting light. People in the shadow are in the shadow of this building. In the shadow of this building came the first zoning law in the country. By virtue of zoning law, we got some regulations regarding the height of buildings. Nobody wanted a houseman to say thou shall have nothing taller than 7 stories. In 1916 the city was a city of towers. What the planners and real estate lobby and architects agreed was that we wanted towers. We wanted skyscrapers in new york. What we did not want was more buildings like this. So they said, in essence, we will have certain zones where you can build a building the multiple of the street it faces. And when, so if youre facing a street that is 100 feet wide and in essence, we will haveyoure in a 1. 5 times zone you can build 150 feet high or 15 stories. If you want to go higher, you have to start back. The planners said we are going to draw an imaginary hypotenuse of a right triangle. When the hypotenuse hits the building you have to have a setback. You can go up some more and when the hypotenuse hits it again you have another setback. You start getting setbacks or ziggurats. Setback. You start getting setbacks or ziggurats. A great illustrator, hugh ferriss, started making drawings to show the logical progression of setbacks. This is the protosetback. If you adhere to the horizontal being drawn, this is what buildings would look like. The planners said you could build on 25 of the land and take a tower as high as you can technologically go. Of course they knew they were inhibiting factors. Think about elevator banks. Youre120, 2040, 4060. It looks like a ziggurat already. If you are going to build a tower that is too tall, the bulk of lower floors are going to be occupied by elevator banks. What is the point of building a building if you cannot rent the space . That was the basic inhibiting factor. Hugh ferriss took it to the next plateau, showing literal setbacks. Still with a freestanding tower but one that is slightly regulated, coming down to scale. He said this is probably the ideal. This is the way a blocked front building should look. On 34th and 35th beginning in the 1850s, we had this building , which was the home of mr. And mrs. William astor. It was a brownstone mansion. It ever looked at garden on the south side. And although there were few windows, there was still a garden there. Mrs. William astor came to be known as the mrs. Astor, in part because of this room, her art gallery, which was metamorphosed into a ballroom every so often. And had a capacity of 400. The brother of william, John Jacob Astor at the third, build a house just south on 33rd street. No windows at all overlooking the garden. This view is the funeral of ulysses s. Grant. It is built right to the lot line, 100 feet from 30 for 33rd street. There were no windows. How do you think mrs. Astor felt about this through her garden, a created neighbors whom she did not know. She decided she was going to move. She went to 65th street. You will see on this map the Waldorf Hotel has a number tickets right on the bottom. 45. 4. On 34th street, you will see the number 50. Those numbers represent feet above sea level. So there is about a 4. 5 foot rise from 33rd30 fourth. Does that give you a hint as to why the waldorf had a flight of stairs leading up to the lobby level . The goal always, this was one of the secrets, to have now that i want to go somewhere, i cannot. The secret was thatthere probably were not that many in the whole of the Lower East Side in the early 20th century. The waldorf was ideally situated. Madison square garden. Harold square was the center of the theaters. The metropolitan opera was on 38 and broadway. From Washington Square to 59th street was president ial. People would go to the waldorf for lunch, for dinner and so on. And despite the fact of peacock alley, by the 1920s, hotels such as the waldorf were considered old hat. Interior decorators such as Dorothy Draper were dusting out the victorian cobwebs. We had in the 1920s prohibition. The waldorf was not a speakeasy. And it was not selling booze under the table. Everyone who knows anything about the Hotel Business knows that hotels are dependent on receipts from the restaurant. And the restaurants were it was out of time. It it was out of place. And it was long plum out of luck. There was a columbia trained architect who had become a developer. He wanted to tear down the waldorfastoria hotel and put up a waldo story office building. It was going to be a mixup firstclass office space it was going to be a mixed of firstclass office space and space that would not be first class, more like a warehouse. With the swipe of one 10 p. M. Pen you get alone. He got a loan. They got more money than anybody had gotten for development report. He went to architects lamb had gone to cornell. The other had gone the columbia. They were working for another architectural firm. But one was killed in 1911. The other was tired. They took over the firm. They designed this building. When you look at the massing of this building, look at the drawing by hugh ferris, its as if the architects basically lifted it. Floyd brown was on the cutting edge of planning in many ways. One of the things he thought was that the building should have an underground garage. Of all written in 1916 said that there could be no new garages on a block unless there had already been a garage. There had never been a garage on 34th street between 5th street and 6th street. Despite this drawing, which shows an underground parking area, there never was one. The other thing the floyd brown imagined was a ramp for truck delivery. It was never installed but if you look to 50th street to rockefeller center, you will see what floyd brown had imagined. Now, floyd brown discovered the 25 million was not enough for his project. So he went back to metropolitan life and they said sorry, we are not going to give you any more money. At the time, there was this man governor alfred e smith. Smith had been born in the shadow of the brooklyn bridge. He went to parochial school, but his father died when he was about in the sixth grade, and smith became the breadwinner of the family. He became a newsy. He went to work at the Fulton Fish Market and started running errands for a local company. He was smart. He wound up in albany as a representative. He then became the governor of the state. In 1911 smith was a strictly tammany guy, which meant that he was not a reformer, but in 1911 we have a fire and something burned in his mind and he started working with people such as senator robert wagner, the father of our former mayor Frances Perkins who went up to be secretary of labor under friendly roosevelt, and bill moskowitz, who was a publicist for reform organizations. He wound up hiring bill moskowitz to be his right hand woman and all many. In 1920, in 1920 eight, he was the democratic nominee for the party. Here and now smith derby on it. What do you think happened in 1928 . Smith did not win, did he . There were three strikes against smith. One was that he was an antiprohibitionist. At a time when the republicans had convinced the electric the electric that the fall said act was a noble good, and they managed to squash the idea of gangsterism and bootlegging. Practically every adult was a lawbreaker in one form or another. In fact, my father was in the Hotel Business and he would make bathtub gin. One day he was asked to make some for a client and my father was delivering it in a baby carriage with an older sister sitting on top of the bottles. She was squalling, of course. Who came along . How smith. He leaned into the baby carriage and said, whats the matter, baby. Bellyache . My father thought was hilarious. Health smith at known that there was three bottles of gin in there. He lost in the prohibition level. He was a catholic at a time when the american electorate was convinced that if we had a catholic in the white house, the pope of rome would be dictating foreign and domestic policy. Also probably had the worst new york accent than anybody had ever heard west of the hudson river. He did not carry new york state curiously. [laughter] and he in 1929, found himself unemployed to the only job he had was metropolitan life, and he was serving on the board. So he knew about the failed endeavor on fifth avenue at 34th street. The democrats had enlisted this man as the chairman of the National Democratic party. This is john j rascob. Neostem is similar upbringing, large family, father dead. He went to work as secretary to appear as to pond. He became a spin golly svengali to dupont. They drop a lot of big initials like m. I. T. Or uva. He would say i went to affect at i went to fff, Fulton Fish Market. During world war i, dupont was making money hand over fist with armaments. He was convinced to invest heavily in General Motors. Dupont Mother Holding so much stock that he wound up being the president of General Motors, and he appointed john j rasckob to General Motors. If you oh General Motors own General Motors, you can thank raskob. These all the handwriting on the wall and got out of the stock market. He took his profits and put them in his pocket. The democrats were convinced that with raskob hettinger fundraising he was one of those on the other side of the aisle they were convinced that big money would come flowing into the coffers with the democratic party. It did not happen. It did not stop raskob from enjoying himself as the germ. At the chairman. He thought it was unseemly that he be the chairman of the National Democratic party and still be affiliated with General Motors. Im not too paranoid, but i wonder if he had been chairman of the republican party. I dont know. Anyway somehow he and smith talked about what they were going to do. Raskob had a pot load of money. They were lounging about at the estate of raskob in palm beach probably where the idea came to start a real estate venture. Smith knew about the failed real estate venture. Interestingly, he knew the work of shreve and lamb. They had designed this building. His between broadway and 8th avenue from 57th street to 50 eight st because 1775 broadway was built by General Motors. This was the gm building before the one went up on fifth avenue and 59th. He knew the work of shreve and lamb. He thought was pretty good. Smith and raskob like the plan, but was not a big nor grandfather goals. They determine that they were in over their heads. They designed a tall building. They had never done that before. So they asked Arthur Loomis harmon, who had designed hotel to become a partner. This is the first major hotel to be designed as a result of the 1916 zoning law. It is now the w new york. Arthur loomis harmon was a single, solo practitioner. By the 1920s, it said the same, that he had mastery over the requisite elements. Things are changing, whereas architecture had been a collaboration of architect painter, and salter. By the early 20 century, it was becoming a collaboration of the architect, engineer, and plumber. So harmon joined the firm, and this was the preliminary plan as they sold the next iteration. This was september 1929. The massing was familiar, but what is more refined. You remember the original plan had been to be a combination of lot building and firstclass office. This was truly firstclass office, which meant that no office with deeper than 28 feet. This is 1929 we are talking about. Yes, they had electricity, but not the way we have lighting today. There was no airconditioning, so they had to have euphemistically fenestration, windows that open and closed. You begin to see that this is becoming more and more of a skyscraper and less and less in 1929, the was the race of the titans. This was the prototype design for what came to be called the Chrysler Building on 42nd street and lexington. It was designed by william van allen. It would not be this design and its ultimate manifestation, as i am sure you know. Van allen had had a partner named h craig severance. While he was designing what was to become the third Chrysler Building, severance was designing 40 wall st, the bank of manhattan building. They were really in a race with each other. At 900 feet, crisis and we are stopping. The bank of the manhattan said, we have got them. We will top the building out at 925 feet, 71 stories, and we will be the worlds tallest building. Chrysler said that we will keep right on building. They announced that their building would be probably taller than 1000 feet. Well, at about this time they got a plan for a 80 story in person building. 80 story Empire State Building. They wanted something as tall as they can get. They were told by the Otis Elevator company. Why . The cables would collapse under their own weight. They said, ok, 80 stories it will be. 1000 feet. Now, if chrysler stops at 950 or so, we will be taller than they will be. We will probably have an enclosed observatory. We will have an open sky observatory with a 360 degree view of the city. It was a miraculous plan. But, just as chrysler had full the bank of manhattan, so before so he fooled raskomb and smith. They kept on building. They sneaked the distinguishing spire a top the Chrysler Building, which took it to 1046 feet. Well, as far as raskomb was concerned, chrysler was a pipsqueak. Yet only been in business for five years. He was an electricity best him. He was not going to let chrysler best him. They went to the architects do you remember hugh ferriss original elevation with everything at an angle . You see this great lines. Great lines . They couldnt do it. They said we are going to have a setback 90 feedback from the sixth floor from fifth avenue so that the tower can basically rise unencumbered. They said we will give up that much rentable space. That is it. We will have a better building for it. It will be more vegetable ventable. Why . Everything will be part of a tower. Do you see the very top of this building . Its an additional five stories. They took the building up to the 86th floor. Remember what otis had said about the elevators question mark to this day, when you go to the 86th floor observatory, you go to the 80th floor and you transfer to a local elevator which takes you up to the 86th floor. And this is the ultimate design, or penultimate design for the Empire State Building you can see the simplicity of it. It takes on almost a human form, doesnt it . It has a spirit. Here are floor plans. The ground floor plan was to be all retail, and the core of the building would be the elevators. And Janitorial Services and things of that nature. Which meant that all the offices and all the retail space was on the outside of the building. Very sensible. And when you started climbing up, he would have floor plans from the six to the 20th floor. Count how many corner offices there are in this design. If you had the corners coming to a right angle, you would have for corner offices, right . Well, you dont. You have three times that as a result of his plan. And the higher you go, the smaller the floor footage, but you still have lots of corner offices, and they are more rentable or you can get more money for them. Now the roofline, does that look familiar to you . [indiscernible] no, youre in the right you are warm. Its also designed here is 505th on 32nd street. But the lines in that building. Instead of having terracotta finials there. If you have stainless steel, you have the impersonate building, right . I talked about the pens ultimate design penultimate design raskomb said to the other, look somebody can do the rest of the thousand feet come what we did in an original plans. 1050 feet. How can we make this building taller . And there was a publisher named moses king in the early 20th century who put out some of the best guidebooks to cities, and he was kings dream of new york, dirigibles casting off the roof tops of buildings to foreign lands. I dont know is smith or raskomb ever saw this, but they certainly had the idea. Hence was born the building scheme. They said, lets put a dirigible massed on top of the building that will be 200 feet high, which will be taller than any building. It will be on top of building that is already 1050 feet high. You can have the pilot of the dirigible drop a line over, go grab it, hook it in, we will wince down the winding line, the dirigible will be more at its bow, and the gang plank would be dropped and people will have to walk from 1050 feet out onto a deck, and you can see where they are going. Thats where king kong put down faye ray. At you can see that there were plans for observation platforms and enclosed observation levels and big and lights. The good life installed, but the faa already said that you have to turn them off because you are blinding pilots in the vicinity. But they went ahead and built this. Smith would go to washington and talk to the navy department. He never got the blessing of anybody to actually have a dirigible tie up there. Think about it. These things are powered they are kept afloat by hydrogen or helium. There is diesel fuel to power the engines, and theres water that serves as ballast. We all know what happened to the hindenburg in new jersey. It blew up. These things were 1000 feet long. Imagine if one of them had been tied up to the top of the impersonate loving it blew up. It would have caused a conflagration that would have made the fire of 1835 look like a Boy Scout Camp fire. They went ahead and designed and built this thing, wings are on it as symbolic of flight, but they never ever had a dirigible tied up to it. On the 102nd floor, you see the flight of stairs leading up . That went up to the area where they had an open platform. Thats where you would climb up to gain access to the dirigible or climb down from it. And this view shows an elevator cab. If you think the elevator cabs at the Chrysler Building are terrific, they werent half bad at the Empire State Building but the role changed in the 1950s. On the 80th floor, where the customs inspection area had planned to go when raskomb and smith realized they were going to be any dirigibles, they put what was called tea room. Well, this tea room had a brass railing on it. You know what smith wanted to do with it. The dirigible mooring mast as a loony idea as it was did give the building the grandest crown that any building war. Before they can build this building, they had to tear down the waldorf, and the company that was hired to be a Demolition Company was start brothers in eagan. They had built 40 walton record time. In world war i, he was charged with designing and building temporary housing for the military. He built housing for the equivalent of philadelphia. The whole towns were built. His firm was undoubtedly the reigning experts in the field. This view shows a sidewalk around the sidewalk level of the hotel, raised level, thats called a sidewalk. Its there to protect pedestrians from falling objects. Something that they did was dig holes in the floor of the waldorf and put suits their shoots their. They would fill up the dump truck and drive off. They discovered that tearing down it was more difficult than they imagined. It was a steel framed building very wellbuilt. It took them longer and cost them more. But they persevered. Here we have the sidewalk on fifth avenue for the new Empire State Building. You can see on the corner of 33rd street a blank space, this would hold a nap for the coming of the building. This photograph is from march 15, 1930. The dropdead date for the opening of the building was may 1, 1931. The reason is that new york had peculiar custom. Leases were expired at the end of april and new leases were signed on may 1. It happens again in the fall. If you did not have your building opened by may 1, you would not get any tenants. So smith then raskomb said to the architect and contractors that you guys have to build this building in a hurry. Here we are. This is march 15. Whats interesting about this photograph is that basically all those buildings between fifth and sixth look exactly the same today. They started building the building on march 17, st. Patricks day, and by april 21, you can see that the building was starting to go out and it would be 210 vertical columns some of them going from the sub basement all the way up to the 102nd floor. You notice that there is an opening on 33rd street big enough for a truck to drive through . Do remember what they did in the wall of her story of . They had trucks drive right into the first floor of the empires the building, dump trucks, chute s, the dump trucks would drop their brick or whatever down the chute onto railroad carts, and they did not use will bear us in the immersive voting. They had railroad carts, and on every core there were Railroad Tracks installed so you load up your small cart, pushed by hand, but still its one of the efficiencies of the Empire State Building. This views those is the ad on the corner of 33rd and fifth for the coming of the building. They started putting up this building in do remember the photograph of the other building . He marveled at the rate at which the building went up. They put up the impersonate loving of the rate of 4. 5 stories a week. This photograph taken july 21 you can see the steel framing. There is a 10 story lag between the time they get the framing up and you start having the face put on. When chicken is a facing in windows put on, then you can start putting down the floors, putting up walls, having a painters come, putting the building together. Engineers today say that you probably use 30 less still than they used in those days because of the improvements in the product. They started putting up this building. The story was that there putting it up so quickly that the steel was still hot from the furnaces in pittsburgh. This woman, bill moskowitz, who was his right hand in albany started a Public Relations firm and she thought it would be marvelous to record the work and give credit to the workers, and she had known a photographer in the area 20 century, lewis mine hine, who was essentially a muckraker. Thats what she knew him to jihad than a reformer herself. He went through the south photographing child labor. She thought he was just a man to record the work on the Empire State Building. Here is one of his photographs. The construction of the building was compared to henry fords moving Assembly Line, only he said that we sometimes only the Assembly Line at four to the moving. The Empire State Building state in place. Here you see river theres realtors men riveting standing on a plank. It was a jury built operation, but the Safety Record of the immersive putting was incredible. It was a cynical belief that for every floor that went up, there was a death among the construction workers. There were five deaths, one of them had i work or down an elevator shaft to see if it was coming. It was. Another at a truck back up and run him over. One of the reasons there were so few fatalities is that the Empire State Building had a fulltime nurse and a first aid station, with a doctor on call an ambulance parked on 33rd street at all times. If there was an injury, it was treated immediately, and if you require been taken to a hospital, the patient was taken to a hospital. When you look at these photographs, you understand the artistry of the man. There is a building in the lower lefthand corner that was metropolitan life, only the worlds tallest building in 1909, now it is for. Here are the final pieces of steel going into the upper structure, the dirigible mooring mast. The irony of the workers is that here they were throwing steel and stone and glass higher and faster into the sky than anybody had ever thrown it before. When work on this building ended , there was only one Major Construction job in new york, and that was rockefeller center. The odds are whether they would land up in the unemployment line and then probably the bread line because what happened in 1929 . The building that was planned in the boom of the 1920s, opened in the bust of the 1930s. It was memorialized in stamps. Here we are back at the wonderful diorama of the impersonate building at the museum. I want you to notice some things in the center bottom, you see that what could be a ladder or a support for a a skit, or Something Like that. You see the ironworker just cavalierly walking along a steel beam. You see men riveting and the bottom righthand corner. You see one man standing on a girder as a gets lowered in the place. I assumed that the Background Research for this was simply the photographs of lewis hine. It was Dwight Franklin who made the dioramas. He was a very scholarly man. He went for history to early valentine manuals to the economic fee of manhattan island. But what could he do with the state Empire State Building question mark there was nothing for him to refer to. It turns out the museum has photographs he took. Now, here we have the man writing riding a beam and attaching it to oppose big we have another worker cavalierly walking along an iron beam. Here we have workers putting together a post. These were all taken by Dwight Franklin. He went up and shot these photographs and they are now in the collection of the museum. One of the dioramas that he did do was the blizzard of 1888. This is the way the city couldve looked yesterday. Here is an elevation showing 5th avenue entrance. You notice the rise from 33rd 240 43. To 44th . Work was at a stage where workmen were already using the words empire state over the fifth avenue entrance. You notice the blur coming out of the building on the left . That is a Truck Driving out of the building, having made a delivery and now back to pick up another load. Now, the design of the building is elemental. The original plan was to have a facade of brick but the architects said brick is very expensive. You have to have a brick layer and you have to use firstclass wreck. We encourage that the building be clad in stone which can be prefabricated, cut off site and delivered ready to be slept on to the building. They did not advocate marble because it was too soft. We all know what has happened to the fifth avenue public library. They did not advocate granite because it was too hard. What is just right limestone. In the best limestone in the United States comes from bedford, indiana. They contracted for bedford, indiana limestone. They said it could be cut so that only the facing has to be finished. The flanks dont have to worry about and the back you dont have to worry about. Ill explain why. In the meantime, look at the detailing on the lower floors. Its almost digitally egyptian like, isnt it . Architecture was influenced by the archaeological digs in central and south america, the mayan culture, the aztec Culture Kings tomb tuts tomb. I call this egyptoid setback are a texture setback architecture. The color of the window frames. How many buildings do you know with red window frames . I know only one out of building 100 and fourth in riverside drive. It gives the building one more note of distinction. The scallop motif is carried out for the entire height of the building. Those vertical elements give the building its thrust, its rise. I was talking about the advantage of only having to cut the limestone on one side. What the architects advocated was that that there be a certain pattern to the construction of the building. You see those stainless steel vertical risers . They are slept over the joints so you dont see the corners of the limestone. The spandrels, it spans the building from the top of the window to the ultimate of the window above. The spandrels are made of prefabricated aluminum simply slapped into place. The window frames cover up other areas, such as the bottom and tops of spandrels, and these windows are flush with the building, which is a hallmark of modernism. The architects did not do it because they were modernists. They did it because it was economic cheap. They also avoided the waffle iron look, which they didnt want. The architects were modernists, not in that they believe so much in what bauhaus was preaching they were trained at the beaux art. If the beaux are preached anything, it was that more is not enough. They like declaration. They thought it was important. They slept declaration on willynilly. Slapped declaration declaration decoration on willynilly. Here is a spandrel. The Art Deco Movement love geometry and that use rectangles, squares, and triangles to abandon. Heres the fifth avenue lobby. It was designed by the round bar studios, marble clad walls in the lobby. If youre looking west, you see an image of the Empire State Building. That is a deity. Here is the entrance to a flight of stairs. It looks as if you could be on the normandy, doesnt it . This is a mezzanine level with motifs in the ceilings. Outside we have these awnings. Notice the horizontal banding . Im beginning to get the cut sign here. I will race through this. I just want you to see the influence of the Empire State Building. Here is the Margaret Hill building, which went up the same year, 1931. Heres radio city music call couple years later. Heres the rainbow room and nbc studios. There is opening day. There is out smith with his grandchildren on the 86th floor. Al smith is pointing to the landmarks to franklin and eleanor roosevelt, who took over the governorship from smith. Why do you think the building is called the Empire State Building . Every tallest building hereto for had a corporate name attached to it. Metropolitan life, singer, will worth, chrysler, bank of manhattan. Smith assumed that the democrats would fill the building with state offices but smith and roosevelt never really got along. When you talk about president ial timber, smith might of had a scrawny tree that grew in the backyard of booking. They simply didnt get along. But the building that was planned in the boom of the 20s, opened in the bust of the 1930s. They cannot rent the space for retail purposes on fifth avenue, so they put photographs in the space. They went so far as to light the building at night, creating the illusion that something was going on. The truth was nothing was going on. There was only Elevator Service from the first to the 25th more, and no service to the 80th. That would run around turning on the lights at night. Im going to skip through some of these. Im going to come to this. I think that Fran Rosenfeld described one World Trade Center admirably. This was the recent cover of the new yorker. I can only surmise that there are emotions are the result of the fact that they are a children and have a skewed perspective on life. I know that you might say that i take a skewed perspective, but when they grow up, im convinced they will come to realize the fact that he should have been a happy one and she the unhappy one. This is the building. [applause] thank you. Thank you so much. We invite everybody upstairs now for a reception from a book signing, and if your questions we know that john would be happy to answer them when he is situated with a drink. Thank you so much. [applause] youre watching American History tv, all weekend, every weekend on cspan3. To join the conversation, like us on facebook at cspan history