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| Famously known as "Theorem 1909" in Rem Koolhaas' Delirious New York, each level is a different world, a phenomenon of the elevator; Full-page cartoon by A.B. Walker published in Life magazine’s “Real Estate Number” of March, 1909. |
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| "Theorem 2015": the elevator is old news. The old is the new: horizontal 4-storey world space; Thesis in progress, October 2014. |
...six architectural concepts for the redevelopment of lower Manhattan were put on public display and unveiled in the press. The relative merits of the designs aside, what is most striking about the published presentations us that the newspapers show aerial views of models and schematic plans of land use; none of these show the public what they would encounter on the street.
- Skyscraper, Prologue: The Skyscraper Problem - A Question of Style, Roger Shepherd
And the street and avenue facades are a disappointment. As in the case in so many high buildings, a soaring and carefully composed grandeur above disintegrates near the ground level. Great tower scale and pleasant street scale seem difficult to reconcile...Superficial and obvious, its generally merely satisfactory proportions, its rich materials cannot redeem its heavy-handed detail, its basic lack of that creative imagination that distinguishes the tower. To the thousands passing, it brings no lift, no "kick"-it is just another building to walk past-adequate perhaps, but humdrum.
- Talbot Faulkner Hamlin criticizing the Empire State Building's relationship to street
