On May 1, 1931, an “awestruck” Franklin D. Roosevelt, then Governor of New York, spoke at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for what was then the world’s tallest building, the Empire State Building.

The new skyscraper, he said, was a symbol of “vision and faith”: vision, because only those who looked to the future could have imagined such a project, and faith, in believing the work would be “fully justified in the days to come.”

The future Presi…