Why visit
The Empire State Building opened on Fifth Avenue in 1931 after construction lasting one year and forty-five days. Shreve, Lamb & Harmon designed the 102-story tower as a stepped Art Deco skyscraper, and its height, limestone massing and illuminated mast quickly made it a defining form on the New York skyline.
What to see
The visitor route begins with galleries on the second and eightieth floors, using construction photography, architectural models and popular-culture material to explain the building before the ascent. The open-air 86th-floor deck surrounds the tower, while the enclosed 102nd-floor observatory uses floor-to-ceiling windows inside the upper mast.
Plan your visit
Its Fifth Avenue lobby is itself a designated interior landmark, restored with metallic ornament and a ceiling mural in the original Art Deco vocabulary. The observatories therefore sit within a working office building and architectural monument, joining long-distance views with the engineering, labor and media history that produced the icon below them.
