Stunning Colorized Footage of The Empire State Building Being Built in 1930

I’ve got a video here for you to check out today and it features colorized video footage from 1930 of the Empire State Building being built in New York City. I liked watching videos like this as they give us a glimpse at what it was like back then, how life was, and how crazy it was for people to be working on high rise buildings like this!

This film is a compilation of restored, enhanced & colorized film footage involving the construction of the Empire State Building (ESB) in New York nearly a century ago. It shows how the base of the building is laid, how all parts are produced in nearby steel works, how steel parts are riveted together, the dangers of working at such high construction altitudes and the completion of the ESB.

What many people probably do not know is that the ESB was built on the spot where the famous first version of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel used to be at 5th Avenue (opened in 1897). In 1931 the hotel re-opened in a new location at Park Avenue. The ESB started with the destruction of the hotel on 22 January 1930, after which the actual construction started on 7 March 1930. It was completed at record speed after only 13.5 months on 11 April 1931 and officially opened on 1 May 1931.

The building was designed in Art-Deco style, is 381 meters high and has 102 floors. Achieving such a height was only possible because of the use of a steel framework. As an important symbol of New York City, the building has been named as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

The various original B&W footage has been motion-stabilized, speed-corrected, restored, enhanced and colorized with contemporary Artificial Intelligence software.