Empire State Building & Dirigibles - A History

Some of you New York City history buffs may have come across old pictures or postcards of a blimp moored to the top of the Empire State Building. Below is a excerpt from the Air & Space Smithsoniian on the matter:

[Previously published on the Airship-List] TT
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Dirigibles would cross the Atlantic, then appear over Manhattan and
glide up to the Empire State Building. After a dirigible docked at
the world's tallest building, passengers would transfer from airship
to skyscraper, and an elevator would whisk them to street level.
Through it all, New Yorkers would be treated to the behemoth hovering
overhead.

The only problem is that the photo is a fake. The artful composite
illustrates nothing more than the wishful thinking of financier John.
J. Raskob and former New York governor Al Smith, the pair that
spearheaded the creation of the Empire State Building in the late
1920s. Previously,the building was to top out at the 85th floor, with
a flat roof. But the story goes that Raskob looked at a scale model
one day and declared, "It needs a hat." After all, the rival Chrysler
Building was crowned with a distinctive stainless steel spire.

Unadorned, the Empire State project would reach higher than the
Chrysler, but only by few feet. The addition conceived by Raskob's
team would add another 200 feet-and it would serve more than a mere
ornamental function. It would become a unique airport in the sky.

With legendary showmanship, Al Smith extolled the building taking
shape, including its airship-docking role. The press chimed in with
talk of "a sensational new era in the history of aviation." By
opening day, May 1,1931, the masonry structure sported a cylindrical
mooring mast, done up in chrome-nickel steel and faceted glass.

The Empire State Building was completed on time and under budget. Yet
for such a well-thought-out building, it was remarkably unprepared
for its role as aviation pioneer. Granted, the building's framework
was stiffened against the 50-ton pull of a moored dirigible, some of
the winch equipment for pulling in arriving ships was installed, and
the 86th floor was readied with space for a departure lounge and
customs ticket offices. The builder's lawyers even prepared a thick
brief, arguing, amongst other things, that owners of neighboring
buildings could not sustain a claim of trespass when they found
dirigibles overhead. But no one worked out one other problem: wind.
The steel-and-glass canyons of Manhattan are an airship captain's
nightmare of shifting air currents. Raskob and Smith were inviting
the unwieldy craft to come in low and slow, over hazards such as the
menacing Chrysler Building spire, and somehow tie up without use of a
ground crew. Then, too, if the crew released ballast to maintain
pitch control, a torrent of water would cascade onto the streets
below. And once secured, a dirigible could be tethered only at the
nose, with no ground lines to keep it steady.

Passengers would have to make their way down a stinging gangway,
nearly a quarter mile in the air, onto a narrow open walkway near the
top of the mast. After squeezing through a tight door, they would
have to descend two steep ladders inside the mast before reaching the
elevators. "Can you see some of the 75-year-old dowager doing that?"
asks Alexander Smirnoff, the current telecommunications director of
the building, as he stands on that walkway.

Confronted with such daunting realities, Smith dispensed bland
assurances that "there must be some way to work that thing out." He
insisted that the US Navy was a partner in the project and its
dirigible Los Angeles would dock at the mast. But the navy remained
mum. The most it did was allow one of its smaller airships to hover
nearby one day at the request of a newsreel company.

Passenger airship service was the province of Germany's Zeppelin
Company, and its head, Hugo Eckener, did not hide his skepticism.
That's fortunate for New York. Just imagine if the hydrogen-filled
Hindenburg had exploded over midtown Manhattan instead of Lakehurst,
New Jersey.

Eventually, the press' initial enthusiasm for the docking scheme
began giving way to concerns about risk. A Philadelphia newspaper
wrote, "Basically the proposal to dock transatlantic airships...hangs
on the highly dubious contention that the saving of an hour's time to
thirty or forty travelers is of more importance than the assured
safety of thousands of citizens on the streets below."

One small airship did drop a a long rope to the mast and held on from
a distance for a precarious three minutes, and another delivered a
bundle of newspapers by rope. After that, the effort was quietly
abandoned. But the mast remained, and it eventually became an asset,
turning out to be a spectacular radio and television transmitter. It
also provided two popular and lucrative observation decks. And it
gave the Empire State Building an unforgettable profile.

Finally, the mast became an enduring symbol of human folly. John
Tauranac, author of The Empire State Building: The Making of a
Landmark, called the airship plan "the looniest building scheme since
the Tower of Babel."

-Lester A. Reingold
Air & Space Smithsoniian, July 2000