The Empire State Building rose from the ashes of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in 1931, and if you think that's just tidy real estate turnover, you'd be wrong.

The land itself was contested for decades. The original Mrs Astor's nephew, William Waldorf Astor, demolished her Fifth Avenue townhouse in a petty family row and built the Waldorf Hotel to outdo her. When she retaliated by moving and having her house replaced with the even grander Astoria Hotel, the two merged into one grand property. Decades later, it all came down for this building.

The structure's height drama was equally theatrical. On the day in 1930 when it topped out at 927 feet, the Chrysler Building had just stolen the world's tallest title by secretly assembling a spire and hoisting it into place. The Empire State's architects had mere months to respond before claiming the crown in 1931, a title it held for four decades.

VoiceMap's tours reveal the building as a pivot point in New York's architectural wars, tracing how ambitious real estate families and engineering rivalries literally reshaped Manhattan's skyline.