New York, USA
The Empire State Building defines The Skyscraper Museum’s use of the term “supertall,” which sets the benchmark for the category at 1,250 ft. / 380 m., rather than the more frequent standard of 300 m. Completed in 1931, the Empire State Building reigned as the world’s tallest building for forty years, until the completion of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in 1971.
New York’s booming economy of the late 1920s inspired a new crop of towers that competed to become the world’s tallest buildings. The Chrysler Building topped out in October 1929 at 1,046 ft., surpassing 40 Wall Street at 927 ft. The height of the Empire State Building, which was initially designed as a flat-topped structure of 80 floors, then 85 floors with an observation deck, stretched to 1,250 ft. and the equivalent of 102 stories with the addition of a stainless-steel mooring mast. Located on Fifth Avenue at 34th Street, the Empire State Building remains the signature tower of New York’s great age of Art Deco skyscrapers, even as the new, super-slender residential towers, such as 432 Park, 111 W. 57th St., and Central Park Tower, rise higher than its spire, and One Vanderbilt will surpass the Empire State Building and become the tallest building in Midtown in 2021.