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Empire State Building opens
350 Fifth Avenue · New York City, United States · 1931-05-01
Built in 410 days during the Depression, it was the tallest building in the world for almost forty years.
The record
| Date | 1931-05-01 |
|---|---|
| Place | 350 Fifth Avenue, New York City, United States |
| Coordinates | 40.7484, -73.9857 (landmark-level precision) |
| Scope | World-historic |
| Sources | Wikipedia |
| Added | 2026-08-14 · source: editors |
Coordinates are given at landmark level. A landmark-level coordinate points at the structure; a city-level one points at the settlement, not at a parcel.
Finding photographs
Every one of these is a search, not a guess: the event is documented, so the pictures exist somewhere. Start here.
- Wikimedia Commons — freely licensed images, with the licence stated on every file. This is the only source we republish from.
- The reference article — its own illustrations, and its citations to archives.
- Image search filtered to reusable licences — useful for tracing which institution holds a picture.
- National and municipal archives of United States, and the picture desks of newspapers published there at the time.
Check the licence before you reuse anything. A photograph being online, or being old, does not make it free; in most countries a 1960s press photograph is still in copyright.
Footage
Newsreel and archive film of events like this often survives. Search YouTube for this event If you find good footage, send us the link and we will attach it to this page.
Time layers at this place
One place, several moments in time. This location has 14 recorded time layers between 1921 and 1925 — slide through them:
- 1921 — Chicago The Musical Ambassador Theater
- 1921 — Music Box Theatre
- 1921 — Walter Kerr Theatre
- 1921 — Nederlander Theatre
- 1922 — New York City Center
- 1922 — Roseland Ballroom
- 1923 — Imperial Theatre
- 1923 — Whitney Museum of American Art (original building)
- 1924 — The Morgan Library & Museum
- 1924 — Broadway Theatre
- 1924 — Al Hirschfeld Theatre
- 1925 — Eugene O'Neill Theatre
- 1925 — Samuel J. Friedman Theater
- 1925 — August Wilson Theatre
Seeded by the editors. This entry was compiled by us from public reference works and is labelled as such, not presented as a reader’s contribution. Sources are listed on the entry. If you know more, or we have it wrong, tell us — corrections are published.
You can add to this page
This entry is a skeleton on purpose. If you were there, if your family was, or if you simply know the place: photographs (yours or ones you have the right to share), comments and corrections to the record above, and observations — what the place was like before, after, what the books get wrong. Everything is read by a person before publication and credited the way you ask.
What readers have added
Nothing yet — this place is waiting for its first memory. The form below takes a date, a story, photographs and links.
Do you know something about 350 Fifth Avenue, New York City?
Old photographs, what your family remembers being on the corner, a shop that is not on any map we have. Contributions are read by a person before anything is published, and we never publish the names of living people.
Nearby in United States
- A bomber hits the Empire State Building (1945)New York City
- 1945 Empire State Building B-25 crash (1945)Central Park
- The Morgan Library & Museum (1924)
- Nederlander Theatre (1921)
- The Fight of the Century (1971)New York City
- Minskoff Theatre (1973)