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One of the most iconic photos of American workers is not what it seems
I've had a poster of this photograph in my cubicle since my second week on the job.
Retropolis
One of the most iconic photos of American workers is not what it seems
But Lunch atop a Skyscraper" has come to represent the countrys resilience, especially on Labor Day.
Workers atop the 70-story RCA building in New York's Rockefeller Center lunch on a steel beam overlooking the city in 1932. (Getty Images) (Bettmann/Getty Images)
By Jessica Contrera
September 1
Eleven pairs of shoes were dangling over the New York City skyline. It was September of 1932, as the Great Depression was reaching its height. Unemployment and uncertainty could be felt throughout the city and the entire country. But on West 49th Street, a pillar of hope was under construction: the art deco skyscraper that would come to be known as 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
The ironworkers constructing its 70 floors were taking a break, sharing boxed lunches and cigarettes. They appeared to be completely unfazed by the location of this break: a narrow steel beam jutting out into the sky, hundreds of feet above the pavement.
As one coveralled man helped another light his smoke, someone snapped a picture. The resulting photograph became one of the most iconic images in the world, an embodiment of the spirit of the American worker. It still hangs in pubs, classrooms and union offices across the nation. Construction workers frequently re-create the 87-year-old photo. And every Labor Day, it is shared across social media, in tribute to those whose perspiration and determination built this country.
Photo buffs know the truth behind the classic photo: It was staged. The men in the picture were real ironworkers. They did build the structure that is now the 22nd tallest building in New York City and home to NBC studios. But rather than capture them in the midst of their lunch break, the photographer posed them on the beam for multiple takes images that were intended as advertising for the new building. Some historians believe there was a sturdy level of the structure, then called the RCA building, just below the frame.
You see the picture once, you never forget it," Rockefeller Center archivist Christine Roussel told Time magazine. But the funniest part about the photographs," she said, "were they were done for publicity.
....
Jessica Contrera is a reporter on The Washington Post's local enterprise team. She writes about people whose lives are being transformed by the major events and issues in the news. Follow https://twitter.com/mjcontrera
One of the most iconic photos of American workers is not what it seems
But Lunch atop a Skyscraper" has come to represent the countrys resilience, especially on Labor Day.
Workers atop the 70-story RCA building in New York's Rockefeller Center lunch on a steel beam overlooking the city in 1932. (Getty Images) (Bettmann/Getty Images)
By Jessica Contrera
September 1
Eleven pairs of shoes were dangling over the New York City skyline. It was September of 1932, as the Great Depression was reaching its height. Unemployment and uncertainty could be felt throughout the city and the entire country. But on West 49th Street, a pillar of hope was under construction: the art deco skyscraper that would come to be known as 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
The ironworkers constructing its 70 floors were taking a break, sharing boxed lunches and cigarettes. They appeared to be completely unfazed by the location of this break: a narrow steel beam jutting out into the sky, hundreds of feet above the pavement.
As one coveralled man helped another light his smoke, someone snapped a picture. The resulting photograph became one of the most iconic images in the world, an embodiment of the spirit of the American worker. It still hangs in pubs, classrooms and union offices across the nation. Construction workers frequently re-create the 87-year-old photo. And every Labor Day, it is shared across social media, in tribute to those whose perspiration and determination built this country.
Photo buffs know the truth behind the classic photo: It was staged. The men in the picture were real ironworkers. They did build the structure that is now the 22nd tallest building in New York City and home to NBC studios. But rather than capture them in the midst of their lunch break, the photographer posed them on the beam for multiple takes images that were intended as advertising for the new building. Some historians believe there was a sturdy level of the structure, then called the RCA building, just below the frame.
You see the picture once, you never forget it," Rockefeller Center archivist Christine Roussel told Time magazine. But the funniest part about the photographs," she said, "were they were done for publicity.
....
Jessica Contrera is a reporter on The Washington Post's local enterprise team. She writes about people whose lives are being transformed by the major events and issues in the news. Follow https://twitter.com/mjcontrera
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One of the most iconic photos of American workers is not what it seems (Original Post)
mahatmakanejeeves
Sep 2019
OP
"Some historians believe there was a sturdy level of the structure, then called the RCA building,
hlthe2b
Sep 2019
#2
Thanks! Never seen that one, but both of those invoke anxiety if you believe they're real. nt
raccoon
Sep 2019
#4
From four years ago: Lunch Atop a Skyscraper Photograph: The Story Behind the Famous Shot
mahatmakanejeeves
Sep 2019
#5
virgogal
(10,178 posts)1. That would be a No Smoking area today.
hlthe2b
(101,730 posts)2. "Some historians believe there was a sturdy level of the structure, then called the RCA building,
just below the frame"...
I prefer to believe that. Just seeing that photo has always given me an overwhelming sense of ill-ease. Their jobs were dangerous enough...
dalton99a
(81,073 posts)3. Yep, it was staged:
raccoon
(31,092 posts)4. Thanks! Never seen that one, but both of those invoke anxiety if you believe they're real. nt
mahatmakanejeeves
(56,904 posts)5. From four years ago: Lunch Atop a Skyscraper Photograph: The Story Behind the Famous Shot
Lunch Atop a Skyscraper Photograph: The Story Behind the Famous Shot
{edited for updated link to photograph}
I've had a copy of this hanging in my cubicle since my second week on the job. I found it thrown out in the trash as I was shopping for groceries during my first weekend off.
Lunch Atop a Skyscraper Photograph: The Story Behind the Famous Shot
How a Galway Pub Led to a Skyscraper
And from last year:
Story behind the iconic Lunch Atop a Skyscraper photo
{edited for updated link to photograph}
I've had a copy of this hanging in my cubicle since my second week on the job. I found it thrown out in the trash as I was shopping for groceries during my first weekend off.
Lunch Atop a Skyscraper Photograph: The Story Behind the Famous Shot
For 80 years, the 11 ironworkers in the iconic photo have remained unknown, and now, thanks to new research, two of them have been identified
Bettman/Corbis
By Megan Gambino
smithsonian.com
September 19, 2012
On September 20, 1932, high above 41st Street in Manhattan, 11 ironworkers took part in a daring publicity stunt. The men were accustomed to walking along the girders of the RCA building (now called the GE building) they were constructing in Rockefeller Center. On this particular day, though, they humored a photographer, who was drumming up excitement about the projects near completion. Some of the tradesmen tossed a football; a few pretended to nap. But, most famously, all 11 ate lunch on a steel beam, their feet dangling 850 feet above the citys streets.
Youve seen the photograph beforeand probably some of the playful parodies it has spawned too. My brother had a poster in his childhood bedroom with actors, such as Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio, photoshopped in place of the steelworkers. The portrait has become an icon of 20th century American photography.
But how much do you know about it?
For the Irish filmmaker Seán Ó Cualáin, the mystery surrounding the photograph is a large part of its appeal. There are so many unknowns, he says. Who was the photographer? And who are the men? ... They could be anybody, says Ó Cualáin. We can all place ourselves on that beam. I think that is why the photograph works.
Ó Cualáin did not plan to tell the story of the photograph, but thats exactly what he has done in his latest documentary, Men at Lunch, which debuted {in September 2012} at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Bettman/Corbis
By Megan Gambino
smithsonian.com
September 19, 2012
On September 20, 1932, high above 41st Street in Manhattan, 11 ironworkers took part in a daring publicity stunt. The men were accustomed to walking along the girders of the RCA building (now called the GE building) they were constructing in Rockefeller Center. On this particular day, though, they humored a photographer, who was drumming up excitement about the projects near completion. Some of the tradesmen tossed a football; a few pretended to nap. But, most famously, all 11 ate lunch on a steel beam, their feet dangling 850 feet above the citys streets.
Youve seen the photograph beforeand probably some of the playful parodies it has spawned too. My brother had a poster in his childhood bedroom with actors, such as Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio, photoshopped in place of the steelworkers. The portrait has become an icon of 20th century American photography.
But how much do you know about it?
For the Irish filmmaker Seán Ó Cualáin, the mystery surrounding the photograph is a large part of its appeal. There are so many unknowns, he says. Who was the photographer? And who are the men? ... They could be anybody, says Ó Cualáin. We can all place ourselves on that beam. I think that is why the photograph works.
Ó Cualáin did not plan to tell the story of the photograph, but thats exactly what he has done in his latest documentary, Men at Lunch, which debuted {in September 2012} at the Toronto International Film Festival.
How a Galway Pub Led to a Skyscraper
By JOHN ANDERSON NOV. 8, 2012
WHEN they dont involve sailors kissing nurses, the symbolic photographs of New York City usually involve skyscrapers: Alfred Stieglitzs snowy shot of the Flatiron Building; Berenice Abbotts electric Night View; Margaret Bourke-White perched atop an art-deco eagle of the Chrysler Building. And Lewis Hines celebrated portrait of 11 Depression-era ironworkers, lunching along an I-beam on the unfinished Empire State Building.
No?
No, on several counts.
The shot isnt by Hine. And its not atop the Empire State Building despite common misperceptions, misrepresentations and an Internet that insists otherwise. Taken Sept. 20, 1932, during the construction of Rockefeller Center, the well-known portrait of 11 immigrant laborers, legs dangling 850 feet above Midtown, ran in the Oct. 2 Sunday supplement of The New York Herald-Tribune, with the caption Lunch Atop a Skyscraper. Everybody knows the picture. Nobody knows who took it. And for most of its 80 years no one has known whos in it.
WHEN they dont involve sailors kissing nurses, the symbolic photographs of New York City usually involve skyscrapers: Alfred Stieglitzs snowy shot of the Flatiron Building; Berenice Abbotts electric Night View; Margaret Bourke-White perched atop an art-deco eagle of the Chrysler Building. And Lewis Hines celebrated portrait of 11 Depression-era ironworkers, lunching along an I-beam on the unfinished Empire State Building.
No?
No, on several counts.
The shot isnt by Hine. And its not atop the Empire State Building despite common misperceptions, misrepresentations and an Internet that insists otherwise. Taken Sept. 20, 1932, during the construction of Rockefeller Center, the well-known portrait of 11 immigrant laborers, legs dangling 850 feet above Midtown, ran in the Oct. 2 Sunday supplement of The New York Herald-Tribune, with the caption Lunch Atop a Skyscraper. Everybody knows the picture. Nobody knows who took it. And for most of its 80 years no one has known whos in it.
And from last year:
Story behind the iconic Lunch Atop a Skyscraper photo