For more than 40 years, the Empire State building was the tallest building in the world, until 1972, when "what" was built?

For four decades, the Empire State Building was the undisputed king of the New York City skyline and the world. Its reign, which began in 1931, represented an incredible feat of engineering and ambition. That era came to a close in 1972 with the completion of the World Trade Center's North Tower. Soaring to a structural height of 1,368 feet, it officially surpassed the Empire State Building's 1,250 feet, claiming the title of the world's tallest.

The construction of the Twin Towers was part of a massive urban renewal project led by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Unlike the single spire of the Empire State Building, this new complex introduced a pair of identical super-towers to Lower Manhattan. Their innovative design, featuring a strong grid of exterior steel columns, allowed for vast, open-plan office floors and enabled them to reach such record-breaking heights.

The new champion's time at the top was surprisingly brief, however. The title of world's tallest building would leave New York City just a year later. In 1973, the Sears Tower (now the Willis Tower) was completed in Chicago, marking another milestone in the global race for the sky. This intense period of construction in the early 1970s forever changed the scale of modern cityscapes.