You’ll undoubtedly have seen this well-known photograph on a greetings card, as the backdrop of a bar, adorning an office wall, on a T-shirt or as a desktop wallpaper on a computer, and the Solinear team is no exception – we walk past Lunch Atop a Skyscraper every day en-route to our office. In fact, the photograph is so ubiquitous that sometimes we hardly notice it at all.
After having watched a documentary on the Smithsonian Channel recently, about this iconic photo, it has highlighted how very little we know about it.
This is what we do know, however…
The men were eating lunch on a girder protruding from the 69th floor of the Rockefeller Centre building during the last months of construction.
They were approximately 840 feet (260 meters) above the bustling 41st Street in Manhattan.
The photograph was taken on September 20, 1932.
The photo appeared in the Sunday photo supplement of the New York Herald Tribune on October 2, 1932
Other photographs taken on the same day show some of the workers throwing a football and pretending to sleep on the girder.
The original glass negative was owned by Corbis, who acquired it from the Acme Newspictures archive in 1995 and was its custodian until 2016. In that time, Lunch Atop a Skyscraper was the best-selling historical image in Corbis’s portfolio, averaging around 100 purchases a month for 10 years.
The original glass plate negative is stored at Iron Mountain, a 1.8 million square foot underground vault just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with priceless artwork, photos, film negatives, pieces of music, and government documents from around the world.
The entire mine is temperature controlled to help maintain the aging documents, as a team works tirelessly to digitally and physically preserve the millions of pieces inside the vaults. Part of the climate controlling comes from an underground lake that is used to pump 50-degree water throughout the mine to maintain a consistent temperature.
As a result of an accident in 1996, the negative was sadly cracked and broken and is beyond repair although a number of high-resolution copy negatives were made prior to the accident.
More than 40,000 people were hired for the building’s construction and no work records exist.
Rumour has it…
Although there is no doubt that the photograph shows actual iron-workers, many believe that the photo wasn’t an impromptu snapshot of 11 men showing off their casual attitude to anxiety inducing heights and safety awareness, but was staged by the Rockefeller Centre to promote its new skyscraper and perhaps offer some hope to the 15 million unemployed people by illustrating how much potential there was for expansion in the city. If this is the case it is the result of a monumental marketing success as, nearly 90 years on, the photograph still captures the imagination and fascination of millions around the globe – all long before the widespread ownership of televisions, the birth of the internet and the subsequent phenomenal reach of social media.
Some may feel that the next rumour spoils the illusion of the photo, whilst others, who struggle with the implications of the photo, may find it a comfort; Although the workers were accustomed to walking along the girders and were confident at great heights, it has been said that just out of view and below the men is a complete floor that they could lower themselves onto therefore their position isn’t as precarious as it appears, but this will always be conjecture as the truth has been lost to history.
What we don’t know…
Whilst several names have been put forward including American sociologist and photographer, Lewis Hine, it is photographer Charles C. Ebbets that has most recently been credited with taking the iconic picture. However, as there were other photographers present on the skyscraper at the time, unfortunately, there is no clear evidence of who the author was.
There has been an abundance of suggestions regarding the identities of the men in the photo with claims that some of the men were possibly of Irish, Native American or Swedish origin.
Although not confirmed, it is believed, that two men have been identified; Joseph Eckner, third from the left, and Joe Curtis, third from the right, by cross-referencing with other pictures taken the same day, on which they were named at the time.
There have been suggestions that the last man on the left – having his cigarette lit – and the first man on the right – the only man staring directly at the camera – were Irish and brothers-in-law but Slovak worker Gustáv (Gusti) Popovic, has also been identified as the first man on the right. Popovic was originally a lumberjack and carpenter. In 1932 he sent his wife, Mária, a postcard with this photograph on which he wrote, “Don´t you worry, my dear Mariška, as you can see, I’m still with bottle. Your Gusti.” Gustáv and Mária’s joint grave in the Vyšný Slavkov cemetery is decorated with the picture.
Whoever he is, it’s hoped that the bottle he’s holding contained nothing stronger than water!
