Shreve, Lamb and Harmon

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Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon was the architectural firm best known for the 1931 Empire State Building, the tallest building in New York.

The firm was formed in 1929 by the Canadian Richmond Harold ("R.H.") Shreve, William Lamb from Brooklyn, and Arthur Loomis Harmon from Chicago. Shreve and Lamb had worked together for the firm Carrère and Hastings and formed their own practice in 1924. Shreve was the businessman and organizer; Lamb the designer. As Shreve and Lamb, then Shreve Lamb and Blake, after about 1920 they served as the successor firm to Carrère and Hastings and are credited with relatively minor New York City projects such as the Forbes Building and the completion of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Building at 26 Broadway. However, the Empire State Building is by far the partnership's most significant design.

Harmon came into the partnership in 1929, after the Empire State Building was already underway. In their first meeting with the client John Jacob Raskob, Lamb asked Raskob about his vision for the building. Raskob stood a pencil on end and said, "How high can you make it so that it won't fall down?".