Empire State Building

American 102-story Art Deco skyscraper and commercial building in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, opened in May 1931. The Empire State Building, named after the New York state's unofficial title, was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon architect bureau and was the world's highest building for over 40 years at 443.2 meters (1,454 ft) tall, surpassed by the World Trade Center. As of 2022, the Empire State Building is the seventh-tallest skyscraper in New York City and the tenth-tallest in the United States; however, it dropped significantly, to the 54th position, in the global rank. (The current tallest building, Dubai's Burj Khalifa, is 828 meters (2,717 ft) — almost twice as high.) Empire State Building houses around 1,000 American and global businesses and operates several observation decks. The skyscraper's site, west of Fifth Avenue between West 33rd and 34th Streets, was initially developed in 1893 as the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. In 1929, Empire State Inc. acquired the property to construct the skyscraper; the design went through over fifteen iterations to ensure it would result in the world's tallest building. Construction began in March 1930 and took 13½ months. The Empire State Building was officially recognized as the tallest building in the world for 42 years; the World Trade Center's North Tower broke the record at 527 m (1,728 ft) in October 1970. It was also the tallest-ever structure until 1954 when KWTV launched the Griffin Television Tower in Oklahoma, which is 480.5 m (1,576 ft), and the tallest freestanding structure till 1967, the completion of Ostankino Tower in Moscow, USSR (540 m, or 1,772 ft). After the WTC was destroyed in September 2001, the Empire State Building again became New York's tallest building and the second-tallest in the United States behind the Willis Tower in Chicago, Illinois (442.3 m, or 1,451 ft). In April 2012, the new One World Trade Center topped the Empire State at 546.2 m (1,792 ft).