These Photos Of History Will Change How You View The World

The Race For The Tallest Building

New York City’s Empire State Building is a product of the race to build the world’s tallest building in the late 1920s. In August 1929, General Motors executive John J. Raskob and the New York governor at the time, Al Smith, announce plans for a 1,000 foot tall Empire State Building to compete with the Chrysler building. Architect William Lamb was commissioned to design the Empire State Building and is said to have based its design off two previous projects he has worked on, the Reynolds Building in North Carolina and the Carew Tower in Cincinnati.