Empire State Building

The Empire State Building, a 102-story contemporary Art Deco style building in New York City, was designed by Shreve, Lamb and Harmon Associates and built in 1931. The tower takes its name from the nickname of New York State and is the tallest building in New York City.

The Empire State Building in pop culture

• Perhaps the most famous popular culture representation of the building is in the 1933 film King Kong, in which the title character, a giant ape, climbs to the top to escape his captors, and eventually dies by falling off of it. In 1983, for the 50th anniversary of the film, an inflatable King Kong was placed on the real Empire State Building. However, a mouse chewed through it one day, partially deflating the ape. He also needed a constant supply of air, and was never fully inflated. Peter Jackson, director of the blockbuster Lord of the Rings movies, is currently completing a new version of King Kong set in a recreation of 1930's New York City.
• The observation deck was the designated site for romantic rendezvous in the films Love Affair and Sleepless In Seattle and a phony Martian invasion in an episode of I Love Lucy.
• The film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow opens with a zeppelin docking at the building's mooring mast. Additionally, the building can be seen with King Kong scaling it in the background of one of the shots.
• An episode of the Supermarionation science fiction series Thunderbirds involves an attempt to move the Empire State Building on tracks to a new location, failing with the collapse of the building.
• In the movie Independence Day, the building is destroyed by a gigantic alien ship.
• In The Chase, a 1965 serial from the William Hartnell-era of Doctor Who, the Doctor, Barbara Wright, Ian Chesterton and Vicki, fleeing through time and space with a group of Daleks in hot pursuit, arrive in their TARDIS time machine on the Observation Deck of the Empire State Building (thus avoiding the long lines). They leave shortly after arriving and shortly before the pursuing Daleks' time machine materializes. The Daleks, ignoring the view, leave almost immediately.
• The building has a cameo role in the 1946 cartoon Baseball Bugs. Fitting the cartoon's theme, the skyscraper is labeled the "Umpire State Building".
• In '. the pterosaur Rodan perches atop the skyscraper and howls at the moon before continuing his rampage on New York City eventually destroying the Statue of Liberty.
• In Unbuilding, by David Macaulay, the building is bought and dissassembled, to be reassembled halfway across the world as a corporate headquarters.