Empire State Building Case Study: Plan, Steel and 410 Days (Shreve, Lamb & Harmon)

The Empire State Building in New York is a 102-storey speculative office tower by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, with William Lamb as designer, built from 1930 to 1931. It teaches three things: how a compact core wrapped by a shallow ring of offices set the plan and even the setbacks; how a design drawn for speed let the builders finish in about 410 days; and how a 1931 tower was retrofitted from 2009 to cut its energy use.

The brief and the client

This was a speculation, not a company headquarters. The NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission's 1981 designation report (LP-2000, by Anthony W. Robins) names John J. Raskob, chairman of General Motors' finance committee, as its author, with Al Smith, four times Governor of New York, as the company president. The report argues that publicity was part of the business plan: Smith's name, the height record and Lewis Hine's construction photographs all went into advertising.

The architects summed up the programme, as the report quotes it: a fixed budget, "no space more than 28 feet from window to corridor", as many storeys of such space as possible, a limestone exterior, and completion by 1 May 1931, "a year and six months from the beginning of sketches". 1 May was the traditional day for signing commercial leases in New York.

Site and context: the Waldorf-Astoria block

The block on Fifth Avenue between 33rd and 34th Streets was Astor land from 1827 (LPC). Astor mansions gave way to the Waldorf (1893) and Astoria (1897) hotels, joined as the Waldorf-Astoria. The hotel was sold to the Empire State interests in 1929. The LPC dates its demolition to 1930; the owner's history page puts sale and demolition under 1928.

Luke Fiederer, in ArchDaily's AD Classics, notes the lot was roughly twice the size of most around it, which gave Lamb room for one central shaft. The Skyscraper Museum says the five-storey base covers two acres. Our case study documentation guide lists what to record on a site.

Concept: shaped by budget, date and lifts

According to the architects, the LPC says, the building was largely shaped by economics and engineering. After four weeks of joint studies, an all-night charrette produced five or six key plans, an elevation, a perspective and a table of rentable areas for the owners' meeting next day.

Height came from the same arithmetic. Asked separately, the lift contractor and the builders each put the economic limit at 80 storeys plus five for executive offices (LPC). The mooring mast, counted as 14 storeys, came later: rental manager Hamilton Weber said Raskob feared Chrysler would raise a hidden spire at the last minute. The mast took the roof to 1,250 ft; docking airships proved impractical because of updrafts at that height.

Empire State Building floor plan: the core and the 28-foot ring

Lamb described the plan himself:

"A certain amount of space in the center, arranged as compactly as possible, contains the vertical circulation, toilets, shafts and corridors. Surrounding this is a perimeter of office space 28 feet deep."

The team drew a prototype floor at the 30th level, where the tower began, and fitted lifts, ventilation and pipe shafts around it for the most rentable area (LPC). The lifts sat in four banks along the long axis, with the low-rise banks at the east and west ends. As banks stop, the core shrinks and the floor plate can shrink with it: "a pyramid of non-rentable space surrounded by a greater pyramid of rentable space".

The ground floor follows the same logic. The LPC's lobby report (LP-2001) explains that the compact core ruled out a central corridor, so the architects planned two lateral corridors about 4.9 m (16 ft) wide beside the lift banks. The ceremonial Fifth Avenue hall was kept separate: long, narrow and chapel-like.

For the real drawings, see the LPC reports, the Skyscraper Museum's 1998 book Building the Empire State (edited by Carol Willis, reproducing the builders' 1931 scrapbook) and the building's scrapbooks at Columbia University's Avery Library, which the LPC cites.

Height, floors and setbacks

The LPC explains the floor count: 80 office floors, five executive floors and the 86th-floor observatory, plus the mast counted as 14 storeys and two basements, gives 102. The Skyscraper Center lists 102 above ground and one below; the owner lists 103 levels.

The tower steps back above its five-storey base, then in shallow setbacks at the 21st, 25th and 30th floors, rises clear to the 72nd, and steps at the 81st, the top of the office floors and their lift banks, and the 85th (LPC). Because the low-rise banks drop off, the tower could step in from the long sides towards a square, so "the building becomes all tower".

The 1916 zoning law required setbacks (ArchDaily), and the LPC notes that from the 30th floor the tower could rise on a quarter of the lot area. For how such rules work in Indian cities, see our guide to setbacks, FAR and height limits.

Empire State Building construction: how it was built in 410 days

The owner's facts page gives 410 days of construction, and its history page says work began on 17 March 1930 and took "one year and 45 days". From 17 March 1930 to the opening on 1 May 1931 is exactly 410 days. The LPC gives completion as April 1931, so some counts end earlier. Either way, it is the build on site, not the whole project.

Date	Step	Source
August 1929	Decision to build	Skyscraper Museum
September 1929	Concept design begins	ArchDaily
1929 to 1930	Site bought; hotel demolished (1930 per LPC, 1928 per owner)	LPC; ESB
17 March 1930	Construction begins	ESB
April 1931	Building completed	LPC
1 May 1931	Opening; President Hoover switches on the lights from Washington	ESB

The Skyscraper Museum's exhibition Building the Empire State puts the whole job at about twenty months from contracts to completion: demolition, foundations and grillages, 57,000 tons of structural steel, and the building itself erected in eleven months. Accounts of pace differ: the owner says four and a half storeys a week; the museum says "a story a day" at its fastest.

Much of the speed was designed in. In an article the LPC quotes, Shreve explained that the windows were set forward of the stone, so there were no stone jambs, heads or reveals to cut. Aluminium spandrels replaced masonry ones, so the limestone piers ran straight up in plain, repeated pieces made in advance. Spandrels and trims were fixed independently, so stone setters did not wait for window fitters.

Structure: the steel frame

H. G. Balcom engineered the structural steel frame. Its weight is given as 57,000 tons by the Skyscraper Museum and 60,000 tons by PBS's Building Big, which describes columns and beams forming a stable three-dimensional grid with very few column-free spans. In our reading, it traded open floors for a frame that was simple to fabricate and erect.

The building also became a wind laboratory. In 1933 Hugh L. Dryden and George C. Hill of the US Bureau of Standards published tests on a 1:250 model, built from drawings Balcom supplied, measuring pressure at 102 points for 11 wind directions. Gauges on the real building were to check the results. The greatest loads came when wind struck one face square on.

On 28 July 1945 a US Army B-25 bomber hit the 79th floor, killing three people on board and eleven in the building, as Radio Diaries reported for 99% Invisible. PBS says the building suffered only minor damage.

Materials and architecture style

The owner lists 200,000 cubic feet of Indiana limestone and granite, 10 million bricks, 730 tons of aluminium and stainless steel, and 6,514 windows. The LPC describes vertical window strips standing slightly proud of the limestone, framed in nickel-chrome steel and separated by dull aluminium spandrels, running bottom to top and stopping at each setback with metal caps.

Is it Art Deco? Lamb never thought so, the LPC says; he called the Chrysler Building the "Little Nemo school of architecture" and his own style "a logical and simple answer" to the programme. The lobby is different: grey and red German marble, aluminium bridges, zig-zag ribbed ceilings and an aluminium silhouette of the building against a rising sun, which the LPC calls "a classic Art Deco creation". The owner says its ceiling mural was restored in 2009 after 20,000 hours of work.

Light, climate and services: the 2009 to 2011 energy retrofit

Daylight came from the shallow office ring. The bigger services story came eight decades later. In 2009 the owner announced a retrofit with Johnson Controls, Jones Lang LaSalle, the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and the Clinton Climate Initiative. Kelly Vaughn of RMI wrote in May 2012 that the projected savings were 38% of energy use and US$4.4 million a year, with 105,000 tonnes of CO₂ saved over 15 years. The measures RMI lists:

• about 6,500 windows rebuilt on site with a suspended coated film and gas fill, not replaced;
• more than 6,000 insulated reflective barriers behind radiators;
• a chiller plant retrofit, avoiding a budgeted replacement of over US$17 million;
• variable air volume air handlers, direct digital controls and demand-controlled ventilation;
• tenant daylighting, lighting and plug-load measures (the largest saver) and tenant energy management.

Cutting loads first let the chillers be retrofitted rather than enlarged, which RMI says brought the payback on the extra cost to three years. Year one beat the guaranteed savings by 5%, saving US$2.4 million (RMI); year two saved US$2.3 million, nearly 4% above the guarantee (FMLink, July 2013). The owner's sustainability page now claims a 49% cut from a 2007 baseline, ENERGY STAR certification every year since 2010 and LEED Platinum in 2025. These are the owner's figures; we found no independent audit of the 49%.

Reception and problems

The LPC records that, half-tenanted, it was nicknamed "Smith's Folly" and the "Empty State Building", and was partly saved from bankruptcy by about a million observatory visitors a year paying a dollar each. The mast never worked as a dock.

The LPC report calls the design "the finest work" of Lamb and notes that at street level people see only the five-storey base, which keeps to the scale of the street. The owner's history page records that the American Society of Civil Engineers named it one of the seven greatest American engineering achievements in 1955.

What designers in India can take from it

Our reading, not the architects' claims:

1. Set plan depth from the window, not the plot. Indian office floors are often as deep as the plot and setbacks allow, pushing people far from windows and loading the air conditioning. A maximum window-to-corridor depth, fixed early, is a simple rule to test.
2. Let lift zoning drive the core and the massing. Work out the lift banks before the elevation. A core that steps in as banks end returns area on upper floors within the same FAR and setback envelope.
3. Design out dependencies between trades. Where cladding waits for window frames and frames wait for masonry, standard stone or panel sizes and details that fix each trade separately can save weeks.
4. Retrofit loads before machines. For older Indian offices, glazing, shading and controls come before new chillers. Our guide to IGBC, GRIHA, LEED and ECSBC covers the ratings that apply.

For a thesis on tall buildings or reuse, see our B.Arch thesis topics by typology.

Visiting

The owner's ticket page lists an open-air deck on the 86th floor at 1,050 ft and an enclosed deck on the 102nd at 1,250 ft, says reservations are required and gives the ticket office as 12 West 34th Street. The Fifth Avenue lobby, a designated interior landmark, is the part to see for the 1931 design.

FAQ

When was the Empire State Building built?

Construction began on 17 March 1930 and the building opened on 1 May 1931. The decision to build came in August 1929, and design began that September.

Who designed the Empire State Building?

Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, with William F. Lamb as chief designer. H. G. Balcom was the structural engineer and Starrett Brothers and Eken were the builders.

How many days did it take to build the Empire State Building?

The owner says 410 days, or one year and 45 days, which matches 17 March 1930 to 1 May 1931. The whole project, including demolishing the old hotel, took about twenty months from contracts to completion.

How tall is the Empire State Building in metres, and how many floors does it have?

381 m (1,250 ft) to its architectural top and 443.2 m (1,454 ft) to the antenna tip, per CTBUH. It is usually given as 102 floors; the owner counts 103 levels, and the LPC explains that 102 includes the mast counted as 14 storeys.

What materials was the Empire State Building made of?

A structural steel frame of 57,000 to 60,000 tons depending on the source, clad in Indiana limestone and granite, with aluminium spandrels, nickel-chrome steel window surrounds and about 10 million bricks.

Planning a commercial building or a retrofit? Find an architect on MOA.

Sources

• NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, Anthony W. Robins: Empire State Building designation report, LP-2000, 19 May 1981 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission: Empire State Building interior designation report, LP-2001, 1981 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• CTBUH Skyscraper Center: Empire State Building (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Empire State Building: Facts and figures (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Empire State Building: History (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Empire State Building: Sustainability (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Empire State Building: Buy tickets (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• The Skyscraper Museum: Building the Empire State, exhibition pages, with the builders and construction figures (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Hugh L. Dryden and George C. Hill, Bureau of Standards Journal of Research, vol. 10: Wind pressure on a model of the Empire State Building (RP545), 1933 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• PBS, Building Big: Empire State Building (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Luke Fiederer, ArchDaily: AD Classics: Empire State Building / Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, 5 December 2016 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Kelly Vaughn, RMI: Empire State Building retrofit surpasses energy savings expectations, 31 May 2012 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• FMLink: Empire State Building's energy-efficiency program saving millions, 5 July 2013 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• 99% Invisible and Radio Diaries: The view from the 79th floor, 14 January 2014 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Wikimedia Commons: Empire State Building from rooftop, Axel Tschentscher (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Wikimedia Commons: Freedom of panorama (accessed 4 Nov 2026)