A lot of us have seen this famous photo titled Lunch Atop a Skyscraper once or twice in history books and we’ve all been led to believe it had something to do with the construction of the Empire State Building. First, it didn’t. This picture was taken at Rockefeller Center in Midtown. Plus, the whole thing was staged. Guys didn’t eat lunch like this that often no matter what history might tell you. If you look even with just a glance there are no safety harnesses, no ropes, no anything that could catch these guys if they fell except each other, and that’s not even close to being enough.
The picture no doubt speeds up the heartbeat of several people that look at it considering that a lot of folks couldn’t even imagine being out on a steel girder in midair with nothing between the ground but a lot of empty space. Many would just seize up at the mere thought of it, but there’s a trick to this photo. It’s been revealed that there was a finished floor just a little ways beneath the men in the photo, meaning that if they did fall and went forwards they would have a chance to land roughly on the floor and not pitch over. If you’ll notice the majority of them are hunched over to some degree anyway, as this isn’t the kind of spot you would normally lean back and try to stretch.
Despite the picture being staged the men that worked on the various buildings throughout New York back in these days had a very hard job to accomplish. Working the high steel was not an envious position aside from the fact that it was a paying job. If you had the know-how and the courage you could make a decent paycheck and take it home to your family. Of course you had to be able to keep coming back and doing what the bosses told you without complaint. These were hard times, those that complained often didn’t get ask to come back. And yet so many people stuck it out because they knew that the alternative, not working, wouldn’t afford them anything.
These were tough men, hard men, doing hard work that demanded a lot of them. It was nice to see that they didn’t always let the pressure get to them. In many way the picture shown above is the determination of the human spirit to persevere during hard times and push forward when things get rough. Think about it, in 1932 the US was still in the middle of the Great Depression, and was still on the tail end of Prohibition. There wasn’t a lot to be done to alleviate the suffering that was going on within the country and there wasn’t much else that could be done except to work, work some more, and then work harder to support one’s family and self.
It was a much harder time in terms of survival. People did what they had to do, and at almost every moment there was a person there to point and shoot in order to document those times.
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