Common Sense Evaluation

29 Sep 1932 — Construction workers eat their lunches atop a steel beam 800 feet above ground, at the building site of the RCA Building in Rockefeller Center. — Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

We don’t know their names, nor the photographer who immortalized them, but these men lunching 800 feet up show the daredevil spirit behind Manhattan’s vertical expansion.

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In a fascinating episode of the wonderful Time series “100 Photos“, the voice of Rockefeller Center archivist Christine Roussel shares the history of the incredibly famous 1932 photo entitled “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper“, featuring brave, but unknown men eating 800 feet off the ground.

The question of the names of all these men comes up frequently who are these men because on the back of the photograph they’re not identified. …I think it’s kind of sad that they’re not recognized because everybody else gets the credit and yet the people who actually have built the building are forgotten. The fact that they are immortalized in this picture and they are the guys who risked their lives building this building. I think that what’s important about the picture is that it places them in history as being important in the development of New York City and Rockefeller Center.

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