The Empire State Building

- The Empire State Building (ESB) was originally to be 80 stories high.
- Work was started on St. Patrick’s day, March 17, 1930, and was completed on April 11, 1931. It was the fastest skyscraper ever to be built.
- The steel skeleton of the ESB took 23 weeks to be built.
-On the first day that the ESB was open to the public, over 5,000 people came to see it.
-The structure of the ESB bends in severe winds!
-At 9:52 on a July morning in 1945, a B-25 army bomber crashed into the ESB between the 78th and 79th floors. The plane’s wings fell down to the ceiling 74 floors below on the fifth floor.
-Birds crash into the ESB on foggy nights. In 1970, on one night, 400 birds crashed into the top 30 floors.
-The ESB was the tallest building from 1930-1970, when it was replaced by the WTC.
-The ESB has 73 elevators, the one with the smallest distance goes 600 miles per minute in 7 miles of shafts.
-There are giant air conditioners that change the air 6 times an hour.
-From the observation decks, snow, rain, and other forms of precipitation can be seen falling upward because of the air around the building.
-There are 60 miles of water pipes, 3,500 miles of telephone/telegraph wires, and 6,500 windows that have to be washed twice a month in the building.