Empire State Building from Fifth Avenue
— the spire that tells you the city is still itself.
Not only on a wall.
“The view north up Fifth Avenue, the tower lifting out of the grid at 34th Street. Three quarters of a century as the skyline's anchor, ten years as the tallest thing on earth, and still the building New Yorkers point to first when a friend visits. The lights at the crown change with the calendar, green for a saint, blue for a team, red and white for a holiday no one needs explained.
Empire State Building from Fifth Avenue, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Empire State Building stands at 350 Fifth Avenue, on the block between West 33rd and West 34th Streets in Midtown Manhattan. It rises 1,454 feet to the tip of its antenna and held the title of the world's tallest building from its completion in 1931 until 1970. The design is the work of Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, executed in limestone, granite, aluminum, and steel during the depths of the Great Depression. The site was previously occupied by the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, demolished in 1929 to make way for the new tower.
The exterior reads as warm limestone from a distance and reveals an Art Deco ornament closer in: aluminum spandrels, granite at the base, a faceted setback profile that steps the tower upward in five stages. The Indiana limestone came from quarries in Bedford. The lobby is finished in marble from Italy, Belgium, France, and Germany, with a mural ceiling restored in 2009. Above the 86th floor observation deck, the mooring mast was originally intended to dock dirigibles, a function it served for exactly one tethered test before the idea was abandoned.
The Fifth Avenue approach is the postcard angle. Looking north from around 23rd Street, the tower aligns with the avenue's centerline and rises clear above the cornices. After dusk the crown's LED lights, replaced in 2012, run a programmed schedule of colors keyed to holidays, charities, sports teams, and civic events. The blue hour just after sunset is when the limestone goes lavender and the windows begin to flicker on, floor by floor, all the way up to the observation deck at the 86th.