I last went up the Empire State Building 40 years ago and I’d forgotten what a truly gobsmacking experience it is.
Visitors have been gawping at the view for almost 100 years, and yet today it’s as fresh and exciting as ever. Some 2.6 million visitors visited last year, paying $129 million, as much as the commercial rents bring in.
The building belongs to that wonderfully confident, spacious, ’30s New York style, with Art Deco everywhere.
It takes up a whole block and has five public entrances manned by smartly dressed doormen (maroon uniforms, peaked hats, lots of gold braid), politely and tirelessly redirecting the public to the visitors’ entrance.
Providing observation platforms is a competitive business and always has been. The aim in 1931 was for it to be the tallest building in the world, which for almost 40 years it was. Today it still boasts the highest outside viewing platform in the West (the Burj Khalifa in Dubai beats it).
But visitors want more than a breezy view of tiny skaters in Bryant Park a thousand feet below, and a dizzying layout of NYC, with Central Park taking up 800-plus acres and the comforting vast back-up reservoir to water New York in a crisis.
They want an ‘experience’ – and the Empire State Building team provides it. There is a museum, with the history of the building, and a brilliant film of its construction. A worker, perched like a monkey high on scaffolding, rhythmically flings hot rivets to a mate who hammers them into a metal strut with a single blow, then reaches for the next one: catch, hammer, reach, catch, hammer, reach. It’s like a ballet.
Everyone over 50 remembers the giant King Kong clambering up the building, clutching tiny Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) in his fist. Recently, the marketing team erected a similarly huge blow-up dragon which straddled several top floors. They hauled him up overnight, to surprise the populace the next day.
It nearly didn’t work: the dragon burst like the balloon it was, having ripped a 12-foot tear in the body. They had to send an abseiler up with giant needle and thread to hang in the air while he sewed up the gash. They blew the dragon up again, before dawn broke.
I got the VIP treatment as I was in New York to flog my new book, ‘guesting’ on telly, radio, podcasts, book-signings – anyone who would have me; even the dreaded TikTok.
It turns out the Empire State Building does all that promoting too. So I got a free tour while they took photos of me hanging over the balcony edge, in a pose I realise every VIP since Fay Wray has adopted. Whether the pics will prompt more visitors for them, or book sales for me, is anyone’s guess. But, honestly, if I’d had to pay for my trip and buy my ticket, I’d have thought it well worth it.
If you’ve never been, go now. It’s truly great.
Prue Leith presents The Great British Bake Off
