The New York Times Building The lighting design for the building's nighttime identity was designed by the Office for Visual Interaction Inc. The tower rises from the street to its roof, with the exterior curtain wall extending higher to , and a mast rising to . , the building was tied with the Chrysler Building as the fourth-tallest building in New York City, due to the unfinished One World Trade Center exceeding their height. The tower is also the tenth-tallest building in the United States. The steel-framed building, cruciform in plan, has a screen of " (41.3 mm) ceramic rods mounted on the exterior of
Empire State Building Mast) in 1954, and the tallest freestanding structure in the world until the completion of the Ostankino Tower in 1967. An early-1970s proposal to dismantle the spire and replace it with an additional 11 floors, which would have brought the building's height to 1,494 feet (455 m) and made it once again the world's tallest at the time, was considered but ultimately rejected. With the destruction of the World Trade Center in the September 11 attacks, the Empire State Building again became the tallest building in New York City, and the second-tallest building in the Americas, surpassed only by the