Empire State Building In a separate transaction, the land underneath the building was sold to Prudential Insurance for $29 million. Helmsley, Wein, and Malkin quickly started a program of minor improvement projects, including the first-ever full-building facade refurbishment and window-washing in 1962, the installation of new flood lights on the 72nd floor in 1964, and replacement of the manually operated elevators with automatic units in 1966. The little-used western end of the second floor was used as a storage space until 1964, at which point it received escalators to the first floor as part of its conversion into a highly-sought retail area. In
Empire State Building with". The historian John Tauranac calls the tower "'the' twentieth-century New York building", despite the existence of taller and more modernist buildings. Early in the building's history, travel companies such as Short Line Motor Coach Service and New York Central Railroad used the building as an icon to symbolize the city. After the construction of the first World Trade Center, architect Paul Goldberger noted that the Empire State Building "is famous for being tall, but it is good enough to be famous for being good." As an icon of the United States, it is also very popular among Americans. In