Customer Reviews

EMPIRE STATE BUILDING: The Making of a Landmark

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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This is an excellent work that details the history of the Empire State Building. I was a bit surprised to find how much the author managed to pack into my paperback. Everything from skyscraper height restrictions to land leases and modern restructuring of ownership for tax purposes (and all the "interesting" stuff in between). If you buy this book and you're not from New York, do yourself a favor and get a map of the area. So you can follow along in the early chapters.

This book is the best book I've read on the building. It is very informative, and has many good pictures. There have been some quite well written books on the Empire State Building, but no other comes as close as John Tauranac's The Empire State Building, The making of a landmark.

Fairly well written book, that can be roughly divided into three parts. The author knows and loves NY, and he loves its' history and buildings and other landmarks.

The first third includes a well-researched overview of the advent of skyscrapers in general, with emphasis on New York buildings. The economic factors at work and the arcana of NYC zoning laws are explained, but not tediously so. The author sets the stage well, and shows us his characters and what motivates them.

The second third describes the mechanics of constructing the building. Plenty of detail, good explanations.

The last third covers the history of the building from its' opening down to the present-day.

This is not a coffee table book of glossy color photographs of this most striking building. Nor is it a dry recitation of architectural, engineering and construction quantities, concepts and terms. Rather, it is a seriously researched and entertainingly written history of the time, events and personalities leading to the conception and creation of the world's most famous skyscraper. Tauranac successfully tackles the challenge of explaining how this mere assemblage of steel and stone has attained such mystical status and continues, 70 years later, to attract admirers. This is a "must read" for the serious ESB fan, or for anyone interested in how this architectural icon was created.

Well, they didn't, but it's a classic anyway.

This is a terrific book for anyone who wants to learn how great projects are visualized, actualized, and pressed through extremely challenging environmental circumstances. It's a source of inspiration for the dreamers and the practical alike.

If you want to read about architecture and engineering, you get only a small dose here. It's more about the capitalization, visioning and building. But that story is magnetic and wonderful.

Only thing they left out: that it was to this (then half-empty) building that Annhaeuser-Busch delivered the "first" case of legal beer to Al Smith at the end of Prohibition. Smith, the "wet" and the eternal optimist, exemplifies what this building was conceived to be: a vibrant and living testimony to the human spirit.

So, it stands to reason that it survives now as New York's essential symbol.

From the outset, the Empire State Building seemed to have had everything going against it. Although conceived during the 1920s boom years, most of the construction went on during the earliest years of the Depression, thereby putting the idea of high occupancy in the severest doubt. Its location wasn't ideal either. It was three miles north of the Wall Street district and a mile south of the center of the midtown business center. And it was ten blocks south of Grand Central Station and three avenues east of old Pennsylvania Station. The idea of mooring dirigibles was quickly scrapped after failed attempts. And sure enough, although the Empire State Building did get built, the tenants did not come. King Kong did, but he didn't pay rent.

John Tauranac describes all this and more in his exhaustive book, THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING: THE MAKING OF A LANDMARK. Written in an engaging style, Tauranac's book is as elegant and interesting as the subject itself, while his wit is as colorful as the characters surrounding the Empire State Building's creation. The book covers the idea for the building, Raskob's and Smith's supervision, the monumental task of the construction workers, and, most importantly, the survival of the building to become THE emblem of America's cultural and economic reach while become THE identifying symbol of New York City. The generous amount of photographs add to the understanding and enjoyment of the book. Highly recommended.

This book is a must read for anyone interested in not only the Empire State Building, but in New York City history of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Who would think that a building completed in 1931 at 1250 feet high would still be the tallest building in NYC in 2007 (of course, we can't forget the tragic loss of the taller WTC Towers). This book covers the quick construction of the ESB, but also covers the politics and history behind the building's location (the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel used to be at the corner of 5th Ave and 34th Street) and the people involved. This is an interesting book about an exciting time where anything seemed possible in one of the world's greatest cities.

I bought this book shortly after a trip to NYC in 2000, and found it to be an excellent history of one of the Big Apple's architectural jewels, the Empire State Building. It is full of intrigue, history, great anecdotes and one-of-a-kind photographs. If you're a visitor to Manhattan or a local resident, you owe it to yourself to read this book.

Lots of great details about the Empire State Building including the fact that TV was
first broadcast from there. I loved it.

Extremely rich and well researched, this work is written in a very lively, enjoyable style. It covers all conceivable aspects of the building's history: location, investors, architects, construction process, technical peculiarities, marketing endeavours, tenancy, etc.

In fact, it is deceptively long and, to be honest, at times a bit tediously detailed. Does the reader really need to know for instance that Queen Elizabeth was served finger sandwiches and no pastrami on her visit in 1957 and that Prince Philip had scotch instead of tea?

Though the book was published in the mid-90's, its contents are hardly dated except of course for references to the World Trade Center and . . . to the impact of economic and real estate downturns.

The illustrations are limited to interesting but smallish black and white photographs that are separate from the text, as was the fashion way back in the twentieth century before computer lay-outs and printing processes achieved today's sophistication.

Overall, this book is highly recommended for anyone interested in the history of what is certainly still the world's most famous skyscraper. It is certainly very refreshing to learn about the energy, determination and perhaps naiveté that allowed the building to be completed in record time in 1931 just as the Great Depression was hitting.