In the early 1950s, when Bill Tortorelli was just a boy, his father used to take him to the roof of his grandmother's tenement on West Broadway and Prince, point out the Empire State Building, and tell him it was the "most amazing building in the world." His father's enthusiasm made an indelible impression on the little boy, and it remains one of his most vivid memories of his father and his youth. So much so that, decades later, when he took the job as chief electrician at the aging patriarch of skyscrapers, his children had to give him a hard time.

"My kids, when I first got this job, they said, 'Dad, what's with you and that building? You were always talkin' about the Empire State Building,' " Mr. Tortorelli says about the position he took in 1991. "I guess I'm passing it on to them now – I guess they'll always remember me now when they see the building. So, I'll have quite a monument!"

This year, as the building celebrates its 75th anniversary, it remains a kind of generational touchstone, a monument marking both the beginning and end of an era in New York – if not the world. When it first opened in 1931, having been built during the height of the Depression, it capped off two decades of construction that saw four Manhattan buildings each becme, for a time, the tallest building in the world.

Today, eight buildings stand taller in other cities, but for 41 years the Empire State Building reigned as the world's tallest building. Standing at 1,454 feet, with 102 stories, it is perhaps the preeminent symbol of the 20th century's feats of engineering.

But like Tortorelli's kids – and many New Yorkers – I've sometimes scoffed at the Empire State Building, which, along with the Statue of Liberty, can seem to be one of the clichés of the city: a tourist destination, a movie prop, an image for a T-shirt or tchotchke sold at a Times Square shop.

Even so, since the destruction of the Twin Towers, the building has once again become the city's tallest building, and once more the visual epicenter of Manhattan. Built in the Art Deco style of the 1920s and 1930s – a stark contrast to the more modern glass-and-steel high-rises that dominate most of Midtown – it hearkens back to a time when it first transformed the urban landscape, and made throngs of people point and call it the most amazing building in the world.

But amazement was not the only reaction, and some people lamented the transformed landscape.

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