My Favourite Building
Every week, TheBusinessDesk.com invites a Yorkshire property professional to reveal their favourite building and explain what makes it so special to them.
This week:
Simon Cullimore, a partner at King Sturge in Leeds – The Empire State Building, New York.
“I HAVE always had a love of numbers, mathematics and statistics.
“This resulted in my career as a valuer and led to my favourite building. The Empire State Building, New York, is a spectacular physical structure and also a fantastic collection of numbers.
“The Empire State Building has 102 storeys and provides a total floor area of 2.77m sq ft, making it the second largest single office complex in America after the Pentagon.
“It has 6,500 windows, 73 elevators, 1,860 steps, a base area of two acres and houses 1,000 businesses. This would be viewed as a significant building in this day and age, never mind in 1931 when it was completed!
“The Empire State was built in 410 days, starting on St Patrick's Day in 1930, using 3,400 workers including members of Mohawk tribes who were reputed to have no fear of heights.
“It became the tallest building in the world and held this record for more than 40 years until completion of the nearby World Trade Centre in 1972 – it is unlikely that any other building will hold this record for so long.
“It was not all plain sailing. Its completion coincided with the Great Depression in the US and large parts of it remained vacant for many years with a profit being achieved only after 20 years. This puts the current property market uncertainty in some perspective – let us hope that there is never a repeat of this!
“Despite my love of the building, my visit to The Empire State Building in 1991 was one with mixed emotions. While it lived up to its numbers and the art deco design is striking, the interior seemed tired and in need of care.
“But, in spite of this, you cannot take away the fact that it was an audacious feat of engineering and construction, decades ahead of its time, and truly deserving of its self-assumed honour of the Eighth Wonder of the World.”
