The open air terrace that wraps the eighty sixth floor, a thousand and fifty feet over Fifth Avenue at golden hour: the steel fence curling in over the parapet, the coin binoculars, the mast climbing to the antenna behind you, and the whole island laid out below, Midtown and the Chrysler to the north, the Hudson on fire to the west, the East River and Queens to the east. The New Yorkers hang on the limestone of the enclosed observatory between its windows, and more hang a lift ride down, in the Art Deco lobby under the gold and aluminium ceiling.
The Empire State Building was designed by Shreve, Lamb and Harmon. Construction started on March 17, 1930, the frame was finished on April 11, 1931, twelve days ahead of schedule and 410 days after work began, and the building opened on May 1, 1931. The plans put an observation deck on the 86th floor roof at 1,050 feet, higher than the Chrysler Building's 71st floor deck; the 158 foot steel mast above the 86th floor was meant to moor airships until the winds made that impossible. The 86th floor observatory has an enclosed gallery and an open air terrace, and at the west end of the Fifth Avenue lobby is an aluminum relief of the building as first built, with rays from the spire and the sun behind it.
Source · Empire State Building, Wikipedia ↗
The 86th floor terrace with its limestone parapet and curved steel fence, the coin operated binoculars, the enclosed observatory, the mooring mast with its aluminium fins, the 102nd floor drum and the antenna, the Chrysler Building, One Vanderbilt and Grand Central below it, Hudson Yards, Madison Square Garden, Central Park and Billionaires' Row, One World Trade Center downtown, both rivers with their boats, and the lobby with its ceiling and the aluminium relief of the building. Mood: golden hour, a thousand and fifty feet up. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.