# Empire State Building audio guide, five stops, free.

Five talks you can start on the street outside tell the story of a tower that went up in 410 days and stands 1,454 feet tall including its spire and antenna, and Chiaro takes over from a photo for anything else in view.

Made by Chiaro. Not affiliated with Empire State Building. Page: https://chiaro.ai/landmarks/empire-state-building/

Herald Square, a short walk west of the tower, is where the whole outline stands framed between two older blocks, and that sidewalk is where the Empire State Building audio guide starts: a self-guided walk of five stops. From there the walk heads east along 34th Street to the visitor entrance at number 20, where the second stop is about the wall rising over your head; then up, past the exhibits on the 2nd and 80th floors, to the open-air deck on the 86th floor for two stops, the view south and the mast overhead; and it finishes back at street level after the lobby lets you out onto Fifth Avenue, at the entrance with the eagles. Three of the five are on public sidewalks and cost nothing; the two upstairs come with the standard admission. Ten minutes of talk in all; Herald Square to the door takes five on foot, and the building's own estimate for the time upstairs is at least an hour.

Visit details on this page come from the building's own website, esbnyc.com, run by Empire State Realty Trust, and the history from those pages and from Wikipedia; we went through them on 26 September 2026 and filed each fact beside the exact sentence it rests on, so that a change on their side shows up on ours. Hours are posted in date ranges that shift with the seasons, and ticket prices move with the day and the time slot, so look at the official pages for the date you have in mind. Inside the building, the staff and the posted notices outrank this page; if they tell you something we have wrong, email us and we will change it.

## The stops

### 1. The tower from Herald Square

William F. Lamb (1883–1952) of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, architects; built by Starrett Brothers and Eken for Empire State Inc. · Built 17 March 1930 to 1 May 1931 · Steel frame clad in Indiana limestone and granite; 1,454 feet (443 m) tall including its spire and antenna, 1,250 feet (380 m) to the roof of the 102nd floor · Herald Square, where Broadway crosses Sixth Avenue at 34th Street, looking south-east towards the tower; public street, no ticket

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/empire-state-building/en/herald-square-approach.mp3?v=1017773 (127 s)

Look for:
- The steps in the outline. The shaft pulls in several times on its way up, and each step sits at the top of a bank of elevators: the zoning law demanded setbacks and Lamb made them the design.
- The mast on the crown. It was the last change to the plans, in December 1929, made to be sure of beating the Chrysler Building.
- The colour. The pale, slightly golden tone is the Indiana limestone that clads the whole tower.

From Herald Square, look south-east, into the gap between the two older blocks on the far corner, and the whole tower is framed for you like a stage set. At this distance you can read it as a single shape: a broad base, a tall shaft, a run of steps pulling in towards the top, and the mast standing on the crown.

Those steps are not decoration. New York's 1916 zoning law said a tall building had to step back as it rose, so that daylight could still reach the street. The architect, William Lamb of the firm Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, turned the rule into the design. The base fills the whole lot for five floors, then the tower pulls back sixty feet on every side, and it steps in again at the 21st, 25th, 30th, 72nd, 81st and 85th floors. Each step lines up with the top of a bank of elevators. Lamb worked the building out from the top down, which is where that pencil shape comes from.

It was designed in a hurry and in a fight. When the work began, 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler Building were both racing for the title of tallest in the world, and in October 1929 Chrysler pushed a 185-foot steel tip out of its roof to reach 1,046 feet. The man paying for this one, John Jakob Raskob, was afraid Chrysler might pull a trick like hiding a rod in the spire and sticking it up at the last minute. So in December 1929 the plans changed one last time. On went a sixteen-story metal crown and, on top of it, a mast for airships. The design had now been changed fifteen times, and the final version was the tallest building in the world by a distance: 1,454 feet to the tip today, spire and antenna included, and 1,250 feet to the roof of the 102nd floor.

The timing is the part that still sounds unlikely. The site was the old Waldorf-Astoria hotel, which closed in May 1929. Demolition began on the first of October. Three weeks later the Wall Street Crash set off the Great Depression, and Raskob refused to cancel. Steel went up from the seventeenth of March 1930, and the building opened on the first of May 1931, one year and forty-five days later, at about four and a half floors a week.

The reward for all that speed was an empty building. In the first year only twenty-three per cent of the space was let, New Yorkers called it the Empty State Building, and it did not make a profit until the early 1950s. Now walk east along 34th Street towards it, and watch the crown slide out of sight behind the base as you get closer.

### 2. The limestone and steel walls above West 34th Street

William F. Lamb (1883–1952) of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon; steel erected by Starrett Brothers and Eken; limestone from the Indiana Limestone Company · Steel topped out 19 September 1930; structurally complete 11 April 1931; visitor entrance at number 20 opened 24 August 2018 · 200,000 cubic feet of Indiana limestone and granite, 10 million bricks and 730 tons of aluminum and stainless steel; 6,514 windows · West 34th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, on the sidewalk outside the visitor entrance at number 20, looking straight up

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/empire-state-building/en/west-34th-street-facade.mp3?v=1009205 (126 s)

Look for:
- The thin metal strips running up either side of each column of windows. They are nickel-chrome steel, and they spared the builders from setting stone around every window.
- The flat panels between one floor's windows and the next: aluminum spandrels, mass-produced, which is a large part of how fourteen floors went up in ten working days.
- The red window frames. When all 6,514 windows were replaced in the modernization program announced in 2009, the frames went back in the building's original red.

You are under the north face now, on 34th Street, and the thing to do is tip your head right back and follow the wall straight up. The pale bands are Indiana limestone, which is what gives the building its blonde colour. Between them run the columns of windows, and between the windows there are two details worth finding from down here.

The thin vertical strips framing each column of windows are nickel-chrome steel. The flat panels between one floor's windows and the next are aluminum spandrels. Both were ways of building faster and cheaper: metal frames meant nobody had to cut and set stone around six and a half thousand windows, and metal panels did away with stone bonding between the floors. The building's own tally for the outside is 200,000 cubic feet of limestone and granite, ten million bricks and 730 tons of aluminum and stainless steel. Look at the window frames themselves, too. They are red. When all 6,514 windows were replaced in the modernization program announced in 2009, the frames went back in the building's original colour.

Nearly everything on this wall was mass-produced, and that is where the speed came from. The builders, Starrett Brothers and Eken, managed four and a half floors a week, when the previous best for a building this tall was three and a half. In one stretch of ten working days they put up fourteen floors. At the peak more than 3,500 people worked here, 3,439 of them on one day in August 1930. Many were Irish and Italian immigrants, and a sizable group were Mohawk ironworkers from Kahnawake, near Montreal. Officially, five men died.

The steel topped out on the nineteenth of September 1930, twelve days early. The building was structurally complete on the eleventh of April 1931, and the former governor Al Smith drove the last rivet, which was solid gold.

Now count up towards the setback at the 81st floor and stop just below it, at the 79th and 80th. On the twenty-eighth of July 1945, on a morning of thick fog, a B-25 bomber flew into this north side at exactly that height. Fourteen people were killed. One engine went straight through the building and came down on a roof on the next block; the other fell down an elevator shaft. An elevator operator, Betty Lou Oliver, fell seventy-five stories in her car and survived. Many floors were open again two days later. The door you are about to walk through, at number 20, is the newest part of the story: it has been the visitors' entrance only since August 2018.

### 3. The open-air deck on the 86th floor

William F. Lamb (1883–1952) of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon; the deck added to the plans in November 1929 · Opened 1931; mesh safety fence added December 1947; redesigned 1979 · Open-air promenade around the 86th floor, 1,050 feet (320 m) above the street · 86th Floor Observation Deck, on the open-air promenade, south side, looking towards Lower Manhattan

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/empire-state-building/en/86th-floor-deck.mp3?v=1055598 (132 s)

Look for:
- The white clock tower of the Metropolitan Life Tower, to the south and a little to the left. It was the tallest building in the world until 1913, and its owner lent the money to build the one you are standing on.
- One World Trade Center on the horizon at the tip of Manhattan, the tower that took New York's height title from this one in 2012.
- The Hudson River to the right, with New Jersey beyond it. On a clear day the view reaches six states.

Walk round the open-air deck to the south side, facing the tip of Manhattan, and give your eyes a moment with the distance. You are 1,050 feet above the street, and on a clear day, the building says, you can see into six states: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Delaware.

This deck was in the plans from November 1929, when the design was announced with an observation floor on the 86th-floor roof, deliberately higher than the Chrysler Building's on its 71st. It got off to a poor start. At the opening luncheon up here on the first of May 1931, fog swallowed the view, and one account says the Statue of Liberty was lost in the mist. It paid for itself regardless. In the Depression years, with most of the offices below standing empty, the deck earned about as much in its first year as the owners collected in rent.

Now look down and a little to your left for a white tower with a clock face and a pointed top. That is the Metropolitan Life Tower, on Madison Avenue at 24th Street, modelled on the bell tower of Saint Mark's in Venice. At 700 feet it was the tallest building in the world from 1909 until 1913. It has a second claim on your attention. In December 1929, with the stock market in pieces, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company lent this building's owners 27.5 million dollars so that construction could start. The skyscraper under your feet was paid for, in part, by the one you are looking at.

Follow the avenues down to the tip of the island, to the tall tapering glass tower on the horizon. That is One World Trade Center. The original North Tower of the World Trade Center took this building's title as the tallest in the world on the nineteenth of October 1970. After the attacks of the eleventh of September 2001, the Empire State was the tallest in New York once again, until One World Trade Center rose past it on the thirtieth of April 2012. To its right is the Hudson, and New Jersey across the water.

The mesh fence around you went up in December 1947, and the deck has had some odd visitors. In July 1946, a year after the bomber, a twin-engine plane that was never identified scraped past it. And every year since 1978 a field of runners has arrived here on foot, up 1,576 steps from ground level, for the Run-Up. The record belongs to the Australian stair-climbing runner Paul Crake, who in 2003 made the climb in nine minutes and thirty-three seconds.

### 4. The mooring mast, looking up from the 86th floor

William F. Lamb (1883–1952) of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon; added at the insistence of John J. Raskob in December 1929 · Added to the plans December 1929; topped out 21 November 1930; broadcast tower 1950–1953; restored 2019–2020 · Hollow steel shaft 158 feet (48 m) tall above the 86th floor, clad in aluminum with 480 windows, topped by a 203-foot (61.9 m) pinnacle · 86th Floor Observation Deck, on the open-air promenade, looking straight up at the mast

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/empire-state-building/en/mooring-mast.mp3?v=1040761 (130 s)

Look for:
- The ribbed aluminum panels on the setbacks of the crown. They were cleaned and coated in silver paint during the restoration of 2019 and 2020.
- The windows banding the shaft, 480 of them, all replaced in 2015. At the top of the shaft is the 102nd floor, the planned airship docking station.
- The lattice antenna on the very top, begun in 1950 so the city's television stations could all broadcast from one place.

Stay out on the open-air deck, put your back to the parapet and look straight up. Everything above you, the stepped aluminum crown, the shaft banded with windows, the lattice on the top, was an afterthought, and for a while it was a joke.

It was added in December 1929, when John Raskob wanted to be certain of beating the Chrysler Building, and it was given a job so that nobody could call it a mere spire. It was to be a mooring mast for airships. The plan reads like science fiction now. Passengers would check in down here on the 86th floor. An elevator would carry them 167 feet up the hollow mast to a waiting room on the 101st floor. From there they would climb to the 102nd and step aboard an airship tied to the mast at the height of a 106th floor.

The wind had other ideas. The building makes its own updrafts, the currents across Manhattan are unpredictable, and an airship would have had to hang on by its nose alone while dropping water ballast onto the streets below. On the fifteenth of September 1931 a small United States Navy airship circled the mast twenty-five times in forty-five-mile-an-hour winds, tried to dock, spilled its ballast and was thrown about by eddies. That near-disaster finished the idea, although one blimp did later manage a single delivery of newspapers. The critics had a fine time. George Shepard Chappell called the mast a silly gesture, and Lewis Mumford called it a public comfort station for migratory birds.

What rescued it was broadcasting. On the twenty-second of December 1931, NBC and RCA began experimental television transmissions from a small antenna on top of the mast. In 1934 Edwin Howard Armstrong tested his new FM system here, from the world's first FM transmitter. In 1950 work began on the tall lattice at the very top, so the city's television stations could all transmit from a single place, and the building says that antenna is struck by lightning about twenty-five times a year. By March 1933 it was a film star too, when King Kong sent the ape up this building.

Now look at the ribbed aluminum panels on the setbacks of the crown. They were cleaned and coated in silver paint between 2019 and 2020. The windows around the shaft, 480 of them, were all replaced in 2015. And the glassed-in level at the top of the shaft is the 102nd floor, the airship docking station that never docked a single airship, where people now go up simply to look.

### 5. The Fifth Avenue entrance at number 350

William F. Lamb (1883–1952) of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon; the lobby ceiling behind the doors recreated 2007–2009 · 1931; lobby restored 2009 · Limestone piers topped with carved eagles around three sets of metal doors and a triple-height transom; the five-story base fills the lot, with a 60-foot (18 m) setback above the fifth floor · Fifth Avenue, west side, on the sidewalk outside number 350, between 33rd and 34th Streets, where the lobby lets out

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/empire-state-building/en/fifth-avenue-entrance.mp3?v=1129159 (141 s)

Look for:
- The eagles carved at the top of the piers either side of the doors.
- The gilt letters EMPIRE STATE set into the limestone above the entrance.
- The geometric metalwork of the three tall doorways and the transom window over them.

You have come down through the lobby and out onto Fifth Avenue, and this is the front door the whole building was designed around. Step to the edge of the sidewalk, turn round and look up. Three tall sets of metal doors with geometric grilles, a triple-height transom window above them, fluted limestone piers on either side, and at the top of each pier a carved eagle. Above the entrance, in gilt capitals, the words Empire State.

The lobby you just walked through is the one part of the building whose decoration tells a story. Over its doorways are bronze panels for three of the trades that built it: electricity, masonry and heating. The ceiling you passed under is both old and new. The original Art Deco mural, designed by the artist Leif Neandross, was a celestial sky of gold stars, sunbursts and gears. In the 1960s it was painted over and hidden behind a dropped ceiling. From 2007, artists and historians spent two years recreating it in 23-karat gold and aluminum leaf, and it was unveiled on the twenty-ninth of September 2009. The building says the job took 20,000 working hours, longer than the original construction of the entire skyscraper. The lobby is a city landmark in its own right, designated in 1981.

Now picture this block with a different building on it. From 1893 it was the Waldorf Hotel, opened by William Waldorf Astor, and four years later his cousin John Jacob Astor the Fourth opened the Astoria next door. Joined together, the Waldorf-Astoria had 1,300 bedrooms, the largest hotel in the world. When it came down in 1929, much of it, the granite and the bronze included, was dumped in the Atlantic Ocean off Sandy Hook, New Jersey. A good part of the grandest hotel in New York is lying on the seabed.

What replaced it won the Fifth Avenue Association's gold medal as the best-designed building to open on the avenue in 1931. And somewhere in the stonework is a time capsule. On the tenth of September 1930 Al Smith laid the cornerstone, and inside it went the previous day's New York Times, one of every coin and note the United States minted in 1930, and photographs of the people who built the place.

This entrance, number 350, is the tenants' front door, and the building is so big it has a ZIP code of its own, 10118. Before you walk away, look up once more past the eagles. The tower rises straight out of the base above your head, and from this close you can see only the first of the setbacks, sixty feet back from the edge of the roof over the fifth floor.

## Before you go

Observatory visitors go in at 20 West 34th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues; that entrance is wheelchair-accessible. Tickets can also be bought in person at the ticket office at 12 West 34th Street. The visit ends through the Fifth Avenue lobby, at 350 Fifth Avenue, on the west side of the avenue between 33rd and 34th Streets.

N, Q, R, W, B, D, F or M train to 34th Street–Herald Square, five minutes on foot from the entrance; 1, 2, 3, A, C or E to 34th Street–Penn Station, also about five minutes; 4, 5, 6 or 7 to Grand Central, about ten minutes.

- Every visit needs a timed reservation for a specific date, booked on the building's website or at the 34th Street ticket office. Tickets bought online cannot be refunded. Children aged 5 and under go in free with an adult ticket holder.
- The standard admission covers the exhibits on the 2nd and 80th floors and the open-air 86th-floor deck, which is all that stops three and four need. The 102nd floor, enclosed and reached by a glass elevator from the 86th, is an upgrade and not one of these stops. Prices vary with the date and the time slot, and a booking charge is added to each order, so compare them on the official ticket page.
- The building is open 365 days a year, holidays included, whatever the weather, with heaters out on the 86th-floor deck in winter. Hours change with the season: the official hours page lists them by date, together with when the entry door shuts and the last elevators go up.

Official tickets: https://www.esbnyc.com/buy-tickets

The building's visitor and ticket pages list no audio guide, and the free official Observatory Experience App it launched in 2016 is no longer in the app stores. What it offers instead is the All Access Tour, sold as a premium ticket: a guide from the building's own ESB Ambassador team takes a private group of up to seven through a VIP entrance and past the lines to the 86th and 102nd floors, over two to three hours. These five talks are the self-guided alternative, with no fee attached, and the first two and the last one play on the pavement before you go in and after you come out.

Official site: https://www.esbnyc.com/

## Questions

**Is there a free Empire State Building audio guide?**

At no cost, yes: five recorded talks from Herald Square to the Fifth Avenue doors. The building itself offers no audio guide at present; its guided option is the paid All Access Tour. For anything the five talks do not reach, Chiaro can narrate whatever your camera is pointed at.

**Can I listen to the Empire State Building audio guide without a ticket?**

Yes, for three of the five. Herald Square, the wall above West 34th Street and the Fifth Avenue entrance are all on public sidewalks. The deck and the mast are heard on the 86th floor, which needs a timed reservation; the standard admission gets you there.

**How much is the official Empire State Building audio guide?**

There is no current one, and the old official app has gone from the app stores. Its own guided option is the All Access Tour, a premium ticket with an ESB Ambassador as your guide, private groups of up to seven and skip-the-line access to the 86th and 102nd floors. The current price is on the site's ticket pages.

**Do I need the 102nd-floor upgrade for this guide?**

No. Both upstairs stops are on the open-air 86th floor, which the standard admission includes. The 102nd floor is an enclosed deck with floor-to-ceiling windows, reached by a glass elevator from the 86th and sold as an upgrade.

**Is the Empire State Building open every day?**

Yes: 365 days a year, rain or shine, including all holidays. Opening hours vary by season and are listed by date on the building's hours page, which also gives the last elevators up for each night.

**Where does the Empire State Building walk begin?**

At Herald Square, where Broadway crosses Sixth Avenue at 34th Street, beside the subway station for the N, Q, R, W, B, D, F and M trains. The tower is framed from there, and the visitor entrance at 20 West 34th Street is a five-minute walk east.

## Continue in the app

Point Chiaro at anything at the Empire State Building.

The tower has a hundred and two floors and this walk stands on two of them. Everything else in view from up there is still unexplained: a wooden water tank on a roof far below, a bridge over the East River, a spire in Midtown you cannot put a name to. Photograph the one that bothers you and Chiaro identifies it, fills in the builder and the backstory, and stays with you through every follow-up you care to ask on the way down.

Download Chiaro: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6745618830?pt=127817940&ct=empire-state-building-md&mt=8