Coordination
The construction of the rest of the Empire State Building was a model of efficiency. A railway was built at the construction site to move materials quickly. Since each railway car (a cart pushed by people) held eight times more than a wheelbarrow, the materials were moved with less effort.
The builders created various innovations that saved time, money, and man-power. Instead of having the ten million bricks needed for construction dumped in the street as was usual for construction, Starrett had trucks dump the bricks down a chute which led to a hopper (a container that tapers at the bottom for controlled release of its contents) in the basement. When needed, the bricks would be released from the hopper, thus dropped into carts which were hoisted up to the appropriate floor. This process eliminated the need to close down streets for brick storage as well as eliminated much back-breaking labor of moving the bricks from the pile to the brick layer via wheelbarrows.9
While the outside of the building was being constructed, electricians and plumbers began installing the internal necessities of the building. Timing for each trade to start working was finely tuned. As Richmond Shreve described:
When we were in full swing going up the main tower, things clicked with such precision that once we erected fourteen and a half floors in ten working days - steel, concrete, stone and all. We always thought of it as a parade in which each marcher kept pace and the parade marched out of the top of the building, still in perfect step. Sometimes we thought of it as a great assembly line - only the assembly line did the moving; the finished product stayed in place.10
Getting Up There - The Elevators
Have you ever stood waiting in a ten - or even a six - story building for an elevator that seemed to take forever? Or have you ever gotten into an elevator and it took forever to get to your floor because the elevator had to stop at every floor to let someone on or off? The Empire State Building was going to have 102 floors and expected to have 15,000 people in the building. How would people get to the top floors without waiting hours for the elevator or climbing the stairs?
To help with this problem, the architects created seven banks of elevators, with each servicing a portion of the floors. For instance, Bank A serviced the third through seventh floors while Bank B serviced the seventh through 18th floors. This way, if you needed to get to the 65th floor, for example, you could take an elevator from Bank F and only have possible stops from the 55th floor to the 67th floor, rather than from the first floor to the 102nd.
Making the elevators faster was another solution. The Otis Elevator Company installed 58 passenger elevators and eight service elevators in the Empire State Building. Though these elevators could travel up to 1,200 feet per minute, the building code restricted the speed to only 700 feet per minute based on older models of elevators. The builders took a chance, installed the faster (and more expensive) elevators (running them at the slower speed) and hoped that the building code would soon change. A month after the Empire State Building was opened, the building code was changed to 1,200 feet per minute and the elevators in the Empire State Building were sped up.
It's Finished!
The entire Empire State Building was constructed in just one year and 45 days - an amazing feat! The Empire State Building came in on time and under budget. Because the Great Depression significantly lowered labor costs, the cost of the building was only $40,948,900 (below the $50 million expected price tag).
The Empire State Building officially opened on May 1, 1931 to a lot of fanfare. A ribbon was cut, Mayor Jimmy Walker gave a speech, and President Herbert Hoover lit up the tower with a push of a button (symbolically pushed at a specific time in Washington, D.C.).
The Empire State Building had become the tallest building in the world and would keep that record until the completion of the World Trade Center in New York City in 1972.
Notes
1. Jonathan Goldman, The Empire State Building Book (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980) 30. 2. William Lamb as quoted in Goldman, Book 31 and John Tauranac, The Empire State Building: The Making of a Landmark (New York: Scribner, 1995) 156. 3. Hamilton Weber as quoted in Goldman, Book 31-32. 4. Goldman, Book 32. 5. Tauranac, Landmark 176. 6. Tauranac, Landmark 201. 7. Tauranac, Landmark 208-209. 8. Tauranac, Landmark 213. 9. Tauranac, Landmark 215-216. 10. Richmond Shreve as quoted in Tauranac, Landmark 204.
Bibliography
Goldman, Jonathan. The Empire State Building Book. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980.
Tauranac, John. The Empire State Building: The Making of a Landmark. New York: Scribner, 1995.
