The Empire State Building- what it was not designed to do

I grew up believing that the mast on the Empire State Building in midtown Manhattan, New York City, was put there to serve as a docking port for dirigibles. Dirigibles were a flight of fancy, most notably advanced by the Germans as a source of national pride, for transatlantic flights.

One featured prominently in an Indiana Jones movie, and, most tragically, in a fiery crash in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Now, don't be confused by the blimps floating over football stadiums. Dirigibles have a metal frame to suppor its skin. A blimp is nothing more than a big bag of helium.

The New York Times puts the kibosh on the link between the Empire State Building and dirigibles:

THE new exhibition at the Keith de Lellis Gallery, “New York: A Bird’s-Eye View,” has a striking assortment of aerial views of the city. No image is more arresting than that of the Navy dirigible Los Angeles docking at the mooring post of the Empire State Building, a giant cigarlike cylinder coming nose-to-nose with the tallest building in the world.

That the photograph is a composite, a fake, is disappointing but not surprising: no airship ever docked there, and indeed the whole mooring mast concept was a bit of a stunt itself.

Now, I didn't know that. Did you? Read the full article.

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