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 used as a "backup" since signal transmissions from the building were generally of poorer quality. With the completion of 1 World Trade Center, some TV Stations began moving their transmitting facilities to 1 World Trade Center, while others, including WABC-TV remained at the Empire State Building, with no plans to consider a move to the new tower. , the Empire State Building is home to the following stations: The 86th and 102nd floors contain observatories, which see a combined average of 4 million visitors per year. Since opening, the observatories have been more popular than similar observatories at 30 Rockefeller