Empire State Building marks 95 years with anniversary celebrations, special events

The Empire State Building marked its 95th anniversary with a new push to keep the 102-story tower as central to New York’s image as it was when its lights first went on. Anniversary offerings included special observation deck experiences, birthday party packages, a Ghirardelli Chocolate Company pop-up on the 86th Floor Observation Deck, and a special birthday tower lighting display.

The celebration fell on May 1, the same date the building officially opened in 1931 after President Herbert Hoover pressed a button from Washington, D.C., turning on the lights for the first time. Construction had begun just over a year earlier, on March 17, 1930, and the tower was completed in 1 year and 45 days, an unusually fast pace for a skyscraper of its scale.

At 350 Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, the Empire State Building once stood as the tallest building in the world for nearly 40 years. That record helped make it more than an office tower. It became a fixed point in the city’s skyline, a structure New York has used again and again to sell itself as both permanent and changeable, a place where ambition is always being repackaged for a new era.

That balancing act was on display in the anniversary campaign, which stretched beyond a single day and continued throughout 2026 as a year-long effort focused on the building’s history, innovation and place in the city skyline. The building’s observatory remained a major economic engine inside that identity. The Empire State Building Observatory Experience was ranked the No. 1 attraction in New York City for four consecutive years, a reminder that the landmark still draws visitors even as skyline competition, tourism patterns and office demand have shifted around it.

The Ghirardelli Chocolate Company pop-up, running from April 10 through May 10, added a limited-time draw to the 86th Floor Observation Deck, while the special tower lighting turned the building itself into part of the show. Nearly a century after it rose so quickly over Manhattan, the Empire State Building remained what it has long been for New York: a symbol that survives by being repeatedly reintroduced.