Empire State Gets a Face-Lift
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The American Institute of Architects teamed with Harris Interactive earlier this year to poll the American public on its favorite buildings in the country. The Empire State Building came in no. one. Once the tallest building in the world (it now ranks ninth), and since September 11, 2001, once again the tallest building in New York, the Empire State, at 77 years old, is still as iconic, and as popular, as ever.
But for a long time it was not considered a prestige office location. Its site at 34th Street put it a bit outside the central office district. And the quality of the office space and building amenities was subpar, a condition exacerbated by a confused and litigious ownership and management. That has now been settled, with the firm Wien & Malkin in undisputed control of management, and of developing a vision for the building’s future.
Much work has already been done on the building’s infrastructure as it’s being upgraded to attract more lucrative tenants — a process reminiscent of the upgrades at Rockefeller Center a few years ago after Tishman Speyer took charge. Changes are now afoot that will alter visitors’ appreciation of the building’s architecture. One glimpse of these changes may be had by going to the far western end of the north lobby corridor, along 34th Street. A section of the lobby’s starkly modern plasticpaneled fluorescent lighting fixtures has been removed to show, several feet higher up, a mock-up of the original ceiling, a mural in metal leaf bearing an elaborate art deco design. The dropped-ceiling lighting panels replaced the original in the 1960s.
The sight startles. It’s not as though the modern dropped ceiling seemed desperately ill-suited to the space. Art Deco architects had begun to assimilate Bauhaus influences, and the Empire State Building has always seemed the staid cousin of the rambunctious Chrysler Building. While the restoration won’t necessarily change that relationship, the mural and the dramatic new lighting will eliminate the harsh fluorescent glare and will considerably jazz up the Empire State Building. The restoration is the work of Beyer Blinder Belle, the city’s most renowned firm of restoration architects, whose credits include Grand Central Terminal and the restored portions of the Morgan Library. On the mural, Beyer Blinder Belle is working with the excellent EverGreene Painting Studios, whose credits include the restoration of Edward Trumbull’s ceiling mural in the lobby of the Chrysler Building. (The restoration work still requires the approval of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.)
The 1939 edition of “New York City Guide” of the Federal Writers’ Project says the “high silver-leaf ceiling is painted in metallic colors with geometric patterns suggesting stars, sunbursts, and snowflakes.” These elements align in gearlike patterns, relating to the “Machine Age” aesthetic of the lobby as a whole.
We also hear talk that the eight illuminated panels in the north corridor, depicting the seven wonders of the ancient world plus the Empire State Building, may be removed. These were installed in 1963, when building management attempted to spruce the place up to keep it competitive with the scores of new modern office buildings then rising in Midtown. Competitiveness was the raison d’être for the new fluorescent ceiling, too. Times change: Four decades later, competitiveness now requires rolling back the modernizations of the 1960s. Still, those illuminated panels are good, kitschy fun. In particular, the image of the Empire State Building fairly accurately shows the building in its neighborhood context, with the structure rising dramatically higher than anything else in the 34th-Street area.
William Lamb, the building’s original architect, might have appreciated that view. After all, he made an image of the building the focal point of the lobby. When one enters through the main portal on Fifth Avenue, the terminus of the western vista features a gorgeous aluminum-on-marble relief of the Empire State Building itself. Lamb felt frustrated by his building’s location on the Midtown grid. He designed a building that in its combination of symmetrical stateliness and soaring verticality would have been the perfect culmination of an axial vista — the way the RCA Building functions in the plan of Rockefeller Center. The lobby relief was the next best thing.
