This photo published in LIFE magazine (later appropriated by Andy Warhol) which was snapped by Robert Wiles on May 1, 1947 captured young Evelyn McHale after she jumped from the Empire State Building's observation deck. The magazine's caption read:
On May Day, just after leaving her fiancé, 23-year-old Evelyn McHale wrote a note. 'He is much better off without me ... I wouldn't make a good wife for anybody,' ... Then she crossed it out. She went to the observation platform of the Empire State Building. Through the mist she gazed at the street, 86 floors below. Then she jumped. In her desperate determination she leaped clear of the setbacks and hit a United Nations limousine parked at the curb. Across the street photography student Robert Wiles heard an explosive crash. Just four minutes after Evelyn McHale's death Wiles got this picture of death's violence and its composure.
Max Page examines in the New York Times the allure of the Empire State Building, especially its presence in popular entertainment. From McHale's suicidal leap, Page extrapolates:
In the image of this sleeping beauty, I saw not only unrequited love but also the skyscraper's sheer gravitational power.
The woman's fall was an homage to the Empire State Building, grisly performance art for the symbol of the modern metropolis, and vivid evidence that because of the building's size and pre-eminence, it has been a target for destruction by creators of popular culture over three-quarters of a century, and a place that could also, in turn, destroy the soul.
[Via]