The Empire State Building’s Mooring Mast
Illustration showing a cutaway of the Empire State Building’s original crown, which featured a mooring mast for dirigibles. Illustration originally appeared in the May 1931 issue of Popular Mechanics.[1]
Pictured above is an illustration from Popular Mechanics that shows the Empire State Building’s proposed mooring mast. This mast was designed to act as a dock for dirigibles, or airships, who would be able to moor themselves to the top of the tower’s crown and load or unload passengers. It’s a wildly optimistic idea, but the realities of docking an airship to the top of a skyscraper proved too complicated to see it to the end.
The late 1920’s were the heyday of airship travel, and German zeppelins were all the rage. New York wanted to get in on the action, and decided to make an event out of it. The original design for the Empire State Building was flat-roofed, but the building owners saw an opportunity to drum up publicity for the tower, so they decided to cap off the building with a 200-foot mooring mast, pictured below. It was marketed as a landing spot for those visiting the city, located hundreds of meters up in the air. It’s hard to say whether the owners were serious about it, or if they were just trying to get publicity for the tower. In the end, the plan was ultimately abandoned, but the mast did get built and it’s still there today.
Elevation of the Empire State Building’s crown, without the mooring mast. The design is similar, just without the reinforcing and mooring tip. Drawing by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon.
The logistics of mooring an airship atop a skyscraper are rife with danger. Dr. Hugo Eckener, commander of the German airship Graf Zeppelin at the time, sums up the issues nicely: The air over a city is as irregular and spotty as the crags of the skyscrapers, particularly at the level of building tops. As a result, the ship would be in constant danger of veering off and crashing into some other building, even on a quiet day. Even if the ship were tied to the mast, it would not be quite safe.[1] In addition, whatever bridging mechanism between the airship and the tower would need to freely rotate to accommodate changes in air currents. Just imagine it: in order to enter or exit the craft, passengers would need to cross a walkway hundreds of meters in the sky that’s free to rotate about the mast’s summit. No thanks.
Postcard showing a zeppelin moored to the top of the Empire State Building. The mooring mast idea was abandoned, but the spire was still built and can still be seen today.
In the end, attaching a massive weathervane to the top of the Empire State Building just wasn’t practical. The plans were abandoned, but the tower still got it’s signature mast atop the flat roof. Over time, four buttresses were added to its base, as well as a needle-like antenna to its top. This re-appropriation of the form has given the crown of the building it’s iconic spire-like quality, which today appears as if it’s always been there. Embedded within this form, however, is the wild optimism of a sky-high entry to the city, for anyone who knows the story.
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[1]: “Dirigible to Try Mooring to Skyscraper Mast.” In Popular Mechanics, vol. 55, no. 5 (1931). 812-813.