The Empire State Building Opens

The Empire State Building opened at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street on May 1, 1931, just thirteen and a half months after construction began on March 17, 1930. Former governor Al Smith, who fronted the building company after losing the presidency in 1928, cut the ribbon with his grandchildren at the Fifth Avenue entrance while President Herbert Hoover pressed a button in Washington to switch on the building's lights. At 102 stories and 1,250 feet, it was instantly the tallest building on the planet, a title it would hold for nearly forty years. The timing was brutal: the boom that financed the tower had already collapsed, and for years the building sat mostly empty, a monument to ambition nobody could afford to rent.