Empire State Building turns 75

NEW YORK:  King Kong famously climbed it, aliens blew it up in "Independence Day" and more than a few New Yorkers have opted to end their lives by plunging from its dizzying heights.   

The iconic status of the Empire State Building, which turns 75 on Monday, has stretched far beyond the confines of New York City to make it one of the world's most recognisable structures -- in the same rank as the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal. 

Though less striking than its art deco rival, the Chrysler Building, and lacking the charm of the Rockefeller Center, the Empire State has captured the public imagination more than both and draws four million visitors a year to its observation deck.   

Its enduring preeminence can partly be attributed to the fact that, following its completion in 1931, the 1,250-foot (381-meter) high skyscraper reigned unchallenged as the world's tallest building for four decades.   

Two years later King Kong had his first date with the Empire State, sparking a lasting Hollywood love affair that included a starring role for the building alongside Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in the 1957 tear-jerker "An Affair to Remember." 

Other associations have been anything but romantic.   A few weeks before the skyscraper opened, a carpenter on the construction crew jumped to his death from the 78th floor -- the first in a long line of suicides attracted by the highest drop in the city.   

The number of "jumpers" proliferated in the economically tough 1930's and 40's and, in December 1947, a supposedly suicide-proof fence was installed to deter the desperate.   

Over the 75 years, around 35 people have managed to end their lives at the Empire State -- most recently last February when a young man gained access to an empty office on the 66th floor and leaped from the window.   

Security guards have long patrolled the observation deck on the 86th floor and just last Thursday managed to foil an attempt by a stuntman to parachute off the building after he had scaled the 10-foot fence.

Work on the skyscraper began in 1929, jut a few days after the great stock market crash of the same year.   Amid the onset of the depression era, the soaring project quickly became a symbol of optimistic defiance with construction gangs competing against each other and raising the structure at the astonishing rate of five floors a week. 

It was completed in just 13 months. "It would be hard to imagine another building ever having so much symbolic power in the American landscape," said Mark Kingwell, author of the forthcoming book "Nearest Thing to Heaven: The Empire State Building and American Dreams."   

"Nothing on earth had been completed as quickly and to such a substantial degree as the Empire State Building," Kingwell told the Manhattan daily, AM New York. 

But for all its iconic significance, it initially struggled to fulfill its primary function as an office building with much of its space going unrented until the 1940s.   

The lack of inhabitants earned it the nickname, the "Empty State Building" -- a moniker that has regained currency in recent years which have seen the vacancy rate rise again to nearly 20 percent.   

Another plan that went awry concerned the building's distinctive art deco spire which was originally designed to be a mooring mast and depot for zeppelins.

However, after a couple of test attempts with airships, the idea proved to be impractical and dangerous due to the powerful updrafts caused by the size of the building itself. 

Another brush with aircraft came in 1945 when a B-25 Mitchell bomber accidentally crashed into the north side between the 79th and 80th floors, killing 14 people. 

During the accident, elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver survived a plunge of 75 stories and still holds the Guinness World Record for the longest recorded elevator fall.