"At 11.30 on the morning of 1 May 1931 [President] Hoover pressed a button and switched on the lights of an American triumph, the Empire State building...It was the loftiest structure on earth...feet high...constructed with 600 million bricks, containing 67 elevators and 6400 windows...capable of accommodating 25,000 office workers....
It was now a monstrous white elephant. Only 20% of its space was was rented and by 1934 the building was losing a million dollars a year...Many of its floors were closed off and one Dartmouth honours graduate was delighted to secure the job of flushing all its unused lavatories every day to prevent chemicals in the water from marring the porcelain finish." (My emphasis)
(The Dark Valley, A Panorama of the 1930s, Piers Brendon, Pimlico, 2001, p73)
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