# Why does everything take so long to build nowadays?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-everything-take-so-long-to-build-nowadays/583203>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 25, 2011, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-everything-take-so-long-to-build-nowadays/583203 "2011-05-25T21:08:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 3

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\
**Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-everything-take-so-long-to-build-nowadays/583203/42 "2011-05-27T15:03:19Z")

</div>

> [@doubled](#):
>
> Untrue. Not only did the ESB have lots of other buildings being built at the same time, but they were all also finished on the same schedule.
> 
> The Chrysler Building was built around the same time as Empire State Building, and _also_ took only a year and a half (September 1928 - May 1930).
> 
> The Trump Building at 40 Wall Street? Built in 1930 (around the same time as ESB) it was in the running for the tallest building in the world at the time, and it took **only 11 months**.

There is a book about the construction of these three buildings by Neal Bascomb, [Higher: A Historic Race to the Sky and the Making of a City](http://www.amazon.com/Higher-Historic-Race-Making-City/dp/0385506600#). It’s not the best book on the ESB or the Chrysler Building (the Manhattan Company Building at 40 Wall Street always gets slighted) but it’s better as an overview on the race to the top. The ESB was finished last, in 1931. By that time all three were essentially vanity projects, their height determined not by rational economic calculations but the hope to have the title of world’s tallest building. All three benefited by the same external conditions, lowered costs for supplies and lowered pay for workers. New York saw hundreds of skyscrapers go up in the 1920s but that pool of competition no longer existed by 1931. So the same external conditions apply whether it was for one building or a dozen.

I can’t say I know the construction history of every building in New York, but a quick Google tells me that Trump World Tower was the tallest building constructed in the western hemisphere between 1992 and 2007, and was also finished in two years, 1999-2001.

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-everything-take-so-long-to-build-nowadays/583203.md?page=2)