New-York Skyscraper

I know this puzzle may more properly belong to trivia newsgroups. Still, I post it here for light fun.

What was the tallest structure in New-York before the Empire State Building was completed?

s p o i l e r s p a c e s p o i l e r s p a c e s p o i l e r s p a c e

The Empire State Building.

Rationale: the question says... 'What was the tallest structure in New-York before the Empire State Building was completed?' So, let's take the moment in time 1 second before the Empire State Building was

but can we be sure that it was not completed by droping the last 20 floors (or perhaps an antena) from a hellicopter, which officially marked the 'it's complete' point for the building.

the owner of the building company declared that the building would be officialy complete at the instant when the droped block touches the base. and who was a better authority on the definition of 'complete'?

so we could have the situation where there was another structure higher before the WSB was completed.

Thomas Nagy:

Richard Heathfield:

Nice answer!

We certainly can

Yeah, Richard did not fall into the trap. He saw through my smokescreen of 'trivia' question! But '[incomplete]' is of course part of the precise answer.

There could have been a crane erected on top of the building in progress, and the combined height of that combined structure could have been even higher than the completed building!

Fascinating they are, all the stories of NY skyscrapers. There was recently a documentary on the ESB on the telly.

Cheers!