The Empire State Building: Renewing the Affair

There has never been a better time to give Gotham a fresh look, and so I headed to the exalted altitude of New York’s first supertall: the Empire State Building, which has just spent $165 million and four years meticulously revamping the experience of getting to — and appreciating — the views from its two vertiginous observatories on the 86th and 102nd floors. Simultaneously, its designers have tried to banish the things visitors hate about the observation-deck trek: the lines, the crowds, the congestion.