Empire State Building
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in New York City. Its name is derived from the nickname for the state of New York. It stood as the world's tallest building for more than forty years, from its completion in 1931 until the construction of the World Trade Center North Tower in 1972, and is now once again the tallest building in New York after the destruction of the World Trade Center in the September 11, 2001 attacks.[1] [Apr 2007]
In popular 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. 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. It also needed a constant supply of air, and was never fully inflated.
- Andy Warhol's 1964 silent film Empire is one continuous, eight-hour shot of the Empire State Building at night, shot in black-and-white. In 2004, the National Film Registry deemed its cultural significance worthy of preservation in the Library of Congress.
