It is 7:28:26 PM on 9/19/2006 in Hoboken, NJ, USA

The Empire State Building Web Cam is sponsored by NYCPlaywrights.

Go here to see the still version.

You are looking at an image of the Empire State Building and the Manhattan skyline from the banks of the Hudson River in Hoboken NJ. A new image is taken every minute - click your browser's "Refresh" button to see the latest image.

Two cams facing each other

The Empire State Building has its own cam - you can view Hoboken (and the Hackensack River and beyond) live from the Empire State Building.

The photos below were taken at 4:00 PM on Thursday, February 26, 2004. The photo on the left was taken by the cam in Hoboken and the photo on the right was taken by the Empire State Building Tower cam. The boat in both photos is the New York Waterway Hoboken to Wall Street ferry.

The view from Hoboken

The view from the Empire State Building

The line of sight

You can see the line of sight from the Empire State Building cam to the Hoboken web cam in this map. The Hoboken cam is represented by the purple square, the Empire State Building is represented by the orange star. You can click on the map to see an interactive Yahoo version.

The New York City View

The Empire State Building Web Cam only displays a small portion of the Manhattan skyline. In addition to the Empire State Building itself, you can also see the New York Life Building with its distinctive gold roof, which is very bright under certain lighting conditions. The Nautica building - the long white balloon shape - hides the West Side Highway. In the live streaming version of this web cam, you may see cars moving on either side of the Nautica structure. In the summer your view of the Empire State Building may be obscured by very large cruise ships heading south (i.e left to right) down the Hudson River to the New York Bay and out to sea. Other boats you may see are the NYWaterway commuter ferries, New York Water Taxis, the Circle Line sight-seeing boats, sailboats, tug boats, yachts and The Beast.

ESB Lights

The Empire State Building is lit up at night. The lights are usually turned off at 12 midnight, unless they're doing maintenance work in which case the lights may stay on all night. The default light color is white, but the color changes for various occasions - for example red on Valentine's Day, green on St. Patrick's Day and red, white and blue for the 4th of July and other national holidays. You can view the light schedule at the Building's web site.

ESB Links

In addition to the Empire State Building's own web site, you can see photos of the construction of the Empire State Building, sites where you can buy statues and books of the Empire State Building, a panoramic view from its observation deck on the Fourth of July (looking towards the East River). There is another web cam looking at the Empire State Building from downtown Hoboken.

ESB Close-up

Click the photo to see a close-up of the Empire State Building. It may take some time to load, if you have a slow connection - it's 1 MB.

ESB scrapbook

Sunrise

Cruise ship

Sunset

View scrapbook for more ESB photos

ESB - a day in the life

Click the animation to see a day in the life of the Empire State Building - sunrise to sunset.