Its speculative purpose required that the Empire State Building provide as much rentable office space as could be built. The setbacks mandated by the 1916 Zoning Regulation while still expressed in the new tower’s form were countered by the fact that the lot on which the building was situated was roughly twice that of most of the surrounding structures; therefore architect William Lamb was able to design a primary tower shaft with ample space for both offices and elevators a dilemma less satisfiably resolved in the previous tallest building in the world the Chrysler Building of 1929.

Given that the Chrysler Building had only held the title of “world’s tallest building” for approximately a year before conceding to the Empire State Building it is perhaps inevitable that the two skyscrapers would be subjected to endless comparison. In pure metrics the latter is the greater building: it is 204 feet (62 meters) taller and its 2 million square feet (186000 square meters) of office space was more than double that of the former. However debate over which tower is the more aesthetically accomplished is not so easily settled.