Скачать или смотреть Lunch atop a Skyscraper by Charles Clyde Ebbets

In the early 1900s, skyscraper laborers were among the most daring and toughest workers of their generation. These men — often immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Eastern Europe, and especially Native American Mohawk ironworkers from Canada and upstate New York — built the steel skeletons of America’s first skyscrapers in New York and Chicago. Their work required immense physical strength, balance, and nerves of steel. Without the safety gear we take for granted today, they walked along narrow steel beams hundreds of feet in the air, carrying heavy tools, hauling rivets, and bolting together the frameworks of buildings that seemed to touch the sky. Falls were common, and death on the job was tragically routine, but the laborers often accepted the danger as part of earning a steady wage during an era of poverty and economic uncertainty.

Their daily lives were a mix of camaraderie and hardship. Many lived in crowded tenements and worked long hours for modest pay, often with little to no job security. Yet on the job sites, they forged bonds of loyalty and humor to keep morale high. Accounts suggest they would eat their lunches perched on the same beams they worked on, joking with each other to hide their fear. For many immigrant families, the wages from these dangerous jobs were their only lifeline in a new country, and pride in their role in building America’s modern skyline outweighed the risks.

The men who climbed alongside them to take photographs faced equally great dangers. Press and promotional photographers hired by construction companies — men like Charles Clyde Ebbets, Lewis Hine, William Leftwich, and Thomas Kelley — ventured out onto the beams with bulky, fragile cameras. Just like the workers, they often had no harnesses or ropes, balancing on girders while looking through a lens. Lewis Hine, in particular, became famous for documenting construction workers at dizzying heights during the building of the Empire State Building in 1930–31. His photographs didn’t just capture the grandeur of the skyscrapers but also humanized the anonymous men who risked their lives to build them.

Together, the laborers and the photographers created some of the most enduring images of the 20th century. The workers gave cities their skylines, while the photographers gave the world a record of both the danger and the dignity of their work. Their lives were lived on the edge — literally — and the images that survive are testaments to bravery, survival, and the human drive to reach ever higher.

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