This is the Empire State Building.
When it was built almost 100 years ago it became the tallest building in the world by far.
It was its own vertical city, housing thousands of workers, a cafe, its own postal system, and thanks to its counterintuitive design it became a money-making machine.
Today, almost 100 years later this single building still pulls in more than $500 million every year, beating every modern skyscraper around today.
This is all thanks to the incredible long-term thinking by its designers who figured out how to overcome strict building rules and assemble this engineering giant in record-breaking time.
But how did they pull it off?
And why is it still so profitable?
In the 1920s, cities around the world were changing.
The economy was booming, and with new steel frame construction methods, it became easier to build taller and stronger buildings.
Nowhere was this more important than in New York City.
