Completed in just 410 days during the depths of the Great Depression, the Empire State Building opened its doors on May 1, 1931. Standing 1,454 feet with its antenna, it claimed the title of world's tallest building, a distinction it held for nearly four decades. Despite the architectural triumph, the building struggled to find tenants during the Depression, earning the nickname the 'Empty State Building.'
Workers had raced against the clock and against a crosstown rival, the Chrysler Building, to erect this Art Deco monument at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. At the peak of construction, more than 3,400 workers, many of them Mohawk ironworkers famed for their fearlessness at height, assembled the steel frame at a pace of four and a half stories per week.
The official opening ceremony on May 1 drew a crowd of dignitaries, and former New York governor Al Smith, now the building's president, cut a ribbon at the entrance before his young grandchildren. In Washington, President Hoover symbolically flipped a switch that illuminated the tower's lights, though the connection was really just a telegraph signal triggering local New York switches.
For all its grandeur, the building sat largely vacant for years afterward; by 1932 only a quarter of its office space had been leased, a stark symbol of an economy in freefall. It would take the postwar boom decades later to finally fill its floors, but the building's silhouette had already become an unshakeable icon of American ambition and Art Deco elegance.