Ever Higher

Author: James Thurber
Year: 1931
Source type: article
Raw file: raw/articles/thurber_1931_ever-higher.md

Summary

A humorous first-person account of visiting the Empire State Building during its construction in early 1931, shortly before its official opening. Thurber describes the arduous climb through scaffolding to the observation platform on the 100th floor, the experience of viewing Manhattan from unprecedented height, and the building's engineering feats (wind-bracing, sway). The piece captures the building as both an engineering marvel and a spectacle of modernity, while noting the (ultimately unrealized) ambition to moor dirigibles at the mast.

Key Claims

• The Empire State Building's observation platform offers a radically new vantage point on the city: "Bryant Park is a pancake, the Statue of Liberty something to throw at a cat."
• The building sways about three inches in a seventy-mile-per-hour gale, but this is "perfectly safe"; the tower is "the best example of a wind-braced building in town."
• The mast was designed to moor airships (dirigibles), though this function was never realized; the guide claimed "they will" tie up, but this remained aspirational.
• The lobby is designed as a spectacle in itself: four stories high, with chromium-and-bronze metalwork, German marble, and a gilt anemometer dial showing wind velocity at the top.
• The experience of height is physically demanding and sensorially intense: "windy," "gusty, roaring place," requiring raincoats even when it's dry at street level.

Connections

Concepts: iconic-architecture, spectacle, spectacle-vs-function, vernaculars-of-capitalism
Authors: thurber-james, sklair-leslie, jencks-charles, willis-carol
Debates: spectacle-vs-function, everyday-vs-iconic-architecture
Related source notes: jencks-2006-iconic-building-here-to-stay, sklair-2017-the-icon-project, willis-1995-form-follows-finance

Direct Quotes

"One day this winter, we got to the eighty-first floor of the Empire State Building, and felt very high up. You had to clamber over scaffolding to get that far then."

"Real explorers kiss their wives goodbye and plunge on up into the mooring mast, which begins here."

"What's it like that high up? Well, Bryant Park is a pancake, the Statue of Liberty something to throw at a cat."

"Even when it's deathly still in the street, a wind blows up there. On cloudy days when it's dry downstairs you will sometimes need a raincoat on the observation platform."

"The sway is perfectly safe; the Empire State is said to be the best example of a wind-braced building in town. It is built to withstand a theoretical wind of two hundred and twenty miles an hour."

"The main lobby of the building (to descend swiftly) is going to knock your eye out: four stories high, very pretty."

"It'll be something to take your aunt to see."

Open Questions

• How does this 1931 account of the Empire State Building as spectacle compare to later theorizations of iconic architecture (Sklair, Jencks)?
• The dirigible-mooring ambition was never realized — does this count as a case of "aspirational identity artefact" (Zamparini et al.) that failed to materialize?
• Thurber's tone is humorous and deflationary — does this represent an early form of critical distance from architectural spectacle, or merely journalistic whimsy?