[NYguy]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...=ITP_newyork_2

Topping Expectations at the Empire State Building





July 10, 2013
By RALPH GARDNER JR.

Many years ago—it must have been in the late '40s or early '50s—my father visited the Empire State Building's antenna. He went far higher than anybody else—except those who serviced the broadcast equipment, soaring 1,454 feet over Manhattan—is allowed to go. He was working for the New York Times back then. And my hunch is that he was accompanying one of the newspaper's photographers, though I can't find any mention of the story in the Times' online archives. However, I have a vivid recollection of him telling me about it, and even seeing the article along with a vertiginous photograph.

My goal all these years has been to climb into the antenna, too. It didn't happen when I visited the world's greatest building Tuesday afternoon. But I got closer than most, and closer than my stomach cared to go. My host was Anthony Malkin, the president of Malkin Holdings, which controls the Empire State Building along with a lot of other New York real estate.

"I was born in 1962," he told me as we stood in the lobby. "My grandfather, father and Harry Helmsley bought the building in 1961."

I was curious whether, growing up, Mr. Malkin was as obsessed with the building as I was. I spent endless hours making models of the Empire State out of Lego bricks. It was a perennial source of conflict and sibling rivalry with my younger brother Johnny. I'd pile up the bricks, only to have him come over and "accidentally" topple the structure, giving me an excuse to pummel him until Marie O'Grady, our baby sitter who I always suspected of secretly preferring Johnny, came to his rescue and separated us.

I wondered whether Mr. Malkin had any similar experiences—either with creating homemade models of the building, or getting into fisticuffs with siblings over craft projects. Also, if my family owned the Empire State Building I think I'd wear it on my sleeve. I'd own every cast iron model of the building available—though not the ones of King Kong clinging to the antenna, which I consider kind of cheesy—and I'd consider myself the coolest guy in class, despite whatever my other limitations; in my case, they were social, academic, physical and psychological.

Mr. Malkin didn't seem to share my passion for the building, at least growing up. "It was in the background," he stated tersely.

But these days he's clearly excited about the place, pointing out seemingly every detail, fixture and molding from the building's 2008-09 renovation. His enthusiasm might also have had something to do with an IPO his company is planning, which includes the Empire State Building. He started with the lobby's ceiling, whose aluminum and 23-carat gold-leaf machine-age murals were reproduced, after decades of neglect behind plastic panels and florescent lights.

"We went back to the original lighting," he explained.

This was all very interesting and beautiful. Indeed, the last time I visited the Empire State Building, with ornithologist Andrew Farnsworth during last fall's bird migration, I noticed that the lobby shone.

But a problem that the Empire State Building has, and that's shared by few others, is that every tourist's focus is on reaching the top. I realize I shouldn't speak for everybody. But part of the building's triumph as a piece of architecture, and the reason it appealed to my atavistic 5-year-old-boy brain, is that form transcends function and enters the realm of fantasy, though the lobby now contributes its part, too.

Your eye and imagination are directed ever upward. Whenever I'm in the neighborhood I pause on the street to bask in the building's great bulk and height. I can't think of any other building on Earth that so embodies raw power, though never at the expense of elegance and grace.

As lovely as the lobby now is, I had as much desire to pay attention to it as I would the waiting lounge of a spaceport 500 years from now as I awaited my flight to the outer planets. It's all about reaching your destination.

I don't think Mr. Malkin fully appreciated my eagerness to board an elevator as soon as possible. Though because my photographer and I were his guests, we wouldn't have to loiter on long lines to reach the observation deck.

Mr. Malkin insisted on showing us an art deco light fixture along a second-floor catwalk that had been part of the building's original specs but never installed before; the handsome red-veined, gray marble-clad lobby, for which Beyer Blinder Belle, the renovation's architects, had to go abroad to find marble that matched the original New York State stone; he even drew our attention to the building's stores, restaurants and pubs. "It's a campus," he exulted, "an urban environment."

He also took us briefly outdoors and onto 33rd Street—approximately the opposite direction from where I wanted to go—to show us elements of the building's Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design reboot. "This is the largest elevator-replacement project in the history of the world," he proclaimed. "Original equipment from 1930 being replaced by state-of-the-art elevators; the braking mechanism stores power used to start the elevators again."

We were eventually whisked through the security lines, making it to the 86th-floor observation deck where we boarded another elevator to 102, but not before Mr. Malkin pointed out the colorfast linoleum on the second-floor visitor's entrance.

It was from there that we mounted a steep flight of stairs that took us to the 103rd floor, a cramped space filled with electrical equipment and copper wiring servicing the antenna. I wasn't expecting there would be an outdoor catwalk traveling the entire circumference of the pinnacle. That's also recently been upgraded with a railing. Nonetheless, the railing isn't any more than waist high. (I'm getting nauseous just thinking about it.)

"Do you want to go clockwise or counterclockwise?" Mr. Malkin inquired.

I have no fear of heights, per se. But I have a surpassing fear, one might go so far as to describe it as a phobia, about falling off tall buildings. I tried to hide my unease—there was a lovely breeze blowing, making the location perhaps New York's coolest on an oppressively hot and humid summer day—but I also made a point of not letting go of the railing as we moved around the catwalk.

Jean-Yves Ghazi, the director of the observatory, who joined us, told me that Tom Cruise had visited before the railing was added. "There's a picture of him sitting on the ledge," he explained, describing the actor, unlike me, as "fearless."

Mr. Malkin said he wasn't worried about the next generation of skyscrapers, several of which will probably exceed the Empire State Building's height within the next few years, possibly stealing some of its thunder. He noted the centrality of its location, poised between the almost completed World Trade Center, shining to our south in the afternoon haze, and to the north the Midtown skyline.

I took his word for it. I wasn't interested in looking down.