The steel frame itself weighed 60,000 tons. The base of the building rises 5 floors above the street. The entrance is 4 floors high, the lobby is 3 floors high, and soars without a break to the 86th floor. The outside of the building is made up of Indiana Limestone and granite, trimmed with aluminum and chrome-nickel steel from the 6th floor to the top. The designers needed 200,000 cubic feet of Indiana Limestone, 10,000 square feet of Rose Famosa and Estrallante marble, 300,000 square feet of Hauteville and Rocheron marble for the elevator lobbies and hallways on the office floors. The Framework was constructed at about 4.5 stories per week with about 3,400 men at the, most. By October 3,1930, there were only 88 floors completed. 14 more were left. These floors were made up of a tower of glass, steel, aluminum, and topped with a dome.
The interior lobby was made up of ceiling high marble from France, Italy, Belgium, and Germany. Imagine installing communication, heat, air conditioning, electricity, and fire safety, telephone cable into this massive structure. How did contractors do this? .
First, to install telecommunications, contractors used special amenities available to tenants including fiber optics, proprietary telephone switch and cable TV, and Internet website directory listing.
Secondly, to install heat, they used local public utility supplies steam about 50 miles of radiator pipe. They also used 7,450 tons of refrigeration.
Thirdly, to install water, they used 70 miles of pipe to provide water to tanks at different floors, the uppermost at the 101st floor. The average daily demand is 26,500 cubic feet of water.
To install electricity, they used 2,500,000 feet of electrical wire, which is 40 million kilowatt hours used by the building each year.
In a high structure, there must be a way to escape in case of fire, so contractors used a special water system, which gives 400 hose connections throughout the building.