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Installed in Empire State Building 75 Years Ago O-Z/Gedney Cable Supports Remain In Service
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June 8, 2005
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When constructing the Empire State Building in 1930, engineers found that the heavy electrical cable installed in vertical raceways or risers imposed excessive strain on terminations, panels or other connected devices.
To answer the challenge the engineers turned to O-Z/Gedney, then known as the O-Z Cable Support Company, to furnish cast iron and hardwood cable supports. This year, as the Empire State Building celebrates the 75th Anniversary of its groundbreaking, many of those same cable supports remain in service.
Then and now, O-Z/Gedney cable supports utilize the exclusive pOZi-grip™ Wedging Plug, a unique manufacturing technique that coats the cable grooves with course grain grit to significantly improve the support’s holding power without damaging the jacket or insulation on the cable.
From the time construction began on March 17, 1930, the Empire State Building’s steel frame rose at an average rate of four and a half floors per week. To speed construction, the building's posts, beams, windows and window frames were made in factories and put together on the site. Train, barges and trucks brought in 60,000 tons of steel from the steel mills in Pennsylvania, 310 miles away. At its peak the labor force numbered more than three thousand construction workers.
The 103-story Empire State Buildings stands 1,454 feet. There are 2,500,000 feet of electrical wire that convey the 40,000,000-kilowatt hours used by the building and its tenants annually.
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