By Claudia Carlin

From icon to beacon for a wounded city, the Empire State Building has fulfilled many of the expectations thrust upon it for the past seven decades. Today, it mournfully reclaims its title as New York's tallest building.

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"It's like an obelisk or a church spire -- for miles and miles you can direct your steps by it," says Deborah Gans, an architect and industrial designer on the top rental floor. "From the street, it seems to float. Once you're inside, it's a city within a city."

Gans and her partner, architect Matthew Jelacic, chose to rent space in the landmark building when they set up an independent practice four years ago. In spite of a not too reliable air conditioning system, they do not plan to move any time soon. "I can usually open a window," says Gans. "Not when the wind pressure fights you," adds Jelacic, smiling.

Today there are 880 other companies renting offices in the Empire State Building, occupying about two million square feet or 93 percent of available office space, (12 million square feet were lost in the destroyed World Trade Center). Most offices on the higher floors are rather small. This is because the tower tapers as it climbs higher and space is taken up by elevators filling the core of the structure which explains that the building cannot accommodate today's corporations.

Dubbed the "Empty State Building," in the press when it opened on May l, 1931 in the throes of the Great Depression, the Empire State lost money for its owners until the 1950's.

The birth of a landmark

Taraunac, author and publisher of New York From On High: A Guide to the View from the Empre State Building, at home with a Tony Lordi lamp.

By the end of the 19th Century, the Industrial Revolution had spawned new inventions. Suddenly elevators, electricity and structural steel made skyscrapers possible. Outside New York City, the Croton Reservoir had been built to provide the city with a steady supply of water, essential because fire remained a major threat in crowded offices and factories. And the price of land was skyrocketing in cities across the country. Urban real estate became a prime asset.

Meanwhile, architects in Europe and North America had been filling their sketchbooks with futuristic towers. As industries and workers flocked to New York, land prices zoomed and speculators had a field day.

Sitting in his West Side apartment, John Tauranac, author of "The Empire State Building - The Making of a Landmark" (St. Martin's Griffin, 1997) says that "a titanic race was taking place across the country." "Like some present developers, tycoons of the Jazz Age didn't just want to build big, they wanted to build biggest."

Just before the stock market crash of 1929, the race was on to erect what would be New York City's premier skyscraper in the Art Moderne style, later known as Art Deco. Its distinguishing features: straight slim lines and set-backs called "ziggurats," reminiscent of the Egyptian pyramids. For a few months, Walter Chrysler had his name on the tallest --and today still the glitziest-- building in New York.

Then in January 1930, on Fifth Avenue between 33rd and 34th Street, where the old Waldorf-Astoria once stood, the foundations of a new tower were sunk. The Empire State Building was born. A total of 3,500 tradesmen and laborers worked on the project and five died in the process. Their names are inscribed on a plaque in the building's marble lobby.

Gans & Jelacic: On 9/11, the first highjacked plane flew so close, it rattled their window.

The project was the brainchild of John J. Raskob, a former General Motors executive and a politician, Al Smith, a former three-time Governor of New York and a Presidential candidate who lost out to Herbert Hoover in 1928. They hired the best skyscraper architects in New York City, the firm of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon. "Through their vision, those men gave the city a gift of beauty," said Gans.

When construction was completed -- an amazing less than 15 months later, spurred by the contractors Starrett Brothers and Eken -- the skyscraper stood, but only by a few feet, as the tallest building in the land. To thumb his nose at the Chrysler needle, Raskob ordered a 200-foot mooring mast for airships to be added at the top. "That mast was the looniest idea since the Tower of Babel," says Tauranac with a laugh, "but [it] provided one of the most distinctive crowns that a building ever wore."

For tenants such as Gans and Jelacic, the Empire State has won the title of icon beyond the fact of its height. "It's truly an object you can admire because it expresses human effort and human care," said Gans. "It's an historical remnant, quaint and precious. No one will ever build anything like this again."