The Empire State Building is a 102-story contemporary Art Deco style building in New York City, declared by the American Society of Civil Engineers to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
Designed by Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, it was finished in 1931. The tower takes its name from the nickname of New York State. Since the September 11th attacks, it is again the tallest building in New York City.
The building belongs to the World Federation of Great Towers.

The site was first developed as the John Thomson Farm, in the late 18th century. The building stands on a block once occupied by the original Waldorf Hotel, a place frequented by The Four Hundred, the social elite of New York, in the late 19th century.

Excavation of the site for the Empire State Building began on January 22, 1930, and construction on the building itself started on March 17. The project involved 3400 workers, mostly European immigrants, along with hundreds of Mohawk nation iron workers; 14 of the workers died during construction.
The project was hurried to completion in order to take the title of "world's tallest building" from the nearby Chrysler Building. The Empire State Building was officially opened on May 1, 1931, when President Herbert Hoover pressed a button in Washington, D.C. that turned on the building's lights, 410 days after construction commenced.
From its opening until the 1940s much of its office space went unrented. This lack of inhabitants earned it the nickname "Empty State Building" in its early years.


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