Why do I click links like these? Just looking at these pics makes my stomach tumble.
Same here. $1 million wouldn’t do it either for me. When I clicked on it, I grabbed my desk. (!!)
Just to add some interesting trivia to ironworkers’ working amongst narrow straits of iron: The Mohawk Nation contributed a significant amount of girder/iron-working to WTC buildings (amongst other skyscrapers and bridges of NYC, of course). [Here’s one link I found with some nifty pics](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/www.whitewolfpack.com/2012/09/the-mohawks-who-buil t-manhattan-photos.html) and stories of how harrowing a position most workers dealt with. The second pic just blows me away seeing Empire State Bldg’s height (in background) in comparison to worker balancing on a roundish-looking bar of some sort - and I can’t see a safety line on anyone in any pic. Damn scary/dangerous job(s), for sure.
In the linked article, it mentions of how many former/current Mohawk Nation builders who still lived/worked around NYC rushed to the collapse since they knew so much of its innards, etc.
Those guys of OP photo, eating lunch on a girder, seem kinda tame when compared to other pics of actual work going on ‘back then’, IMHO. Just wanted to throw this trivia out…
Does anyone know haw many iron workers died erecting that building?
Though rumors of hundreds of people dying on the work site circulated during the time of its construction, official records state that only five workers were killed: one worker was struck by a truck; a second fell down an elevator shaft; a third was hit by a hoist; a fourth was in a blast area; and a fifth fell off a scaffold.
On edit: that’s Empire State, not RCA. Not sure about RCA.
If you visit the Top of the Rock at Rockefeller Center, there is an entire exhibit about this photograph. You can even get your own photo simulating being on the girder.
Your first link doesn’t work for me.
Nitpick regarding your second link: that’s the Chrysler Building in the background, not the Empire State Building.
FYI, here is a column by Cecil Adams on “Why do so many Native Americans work on skyscrapers?” (There was a myth that members of the Mohawk tribe had no fear of heights, but serious research by an anthropologist revealed that the Mohawk ironworkers were just as scared as anyone else; they just pretended not to be.)
Back in those days, it was assumed that there would be a few deaths in the process of a huge construction project like that. Insurance for the construction companies cost a huge amount.
When they built the St. Louis Arch, the insurance company predicted 13 deaths. It was completed without any.
If you look a the original photo linked in post #2, the guy on the far left has a bottle propped on his left knee. Fairly certain that’s not water!
Well, I’d sure as hell have to have some liquid courage to do anything like that at all.
There is a floor there. It is right there in the original photo shown in a diagonal on the left-hand side at the bottom. I never noticed it before but Johnny LA is correct. The angle of the shot throws off your perspective but it is obvious in retrospect that they are sitting on the outer frame of a top floor but the floor just below it already had its internal structure and sub-flooring or temporary flooring installed.
That might not have helped if they flipped off of the beam backwards but they could have fallen off face forward and only dropped 10 feet or so. That isn’t anything to laugh at either but it isn’t the same thing as falling over 800 feet to certain death. I know those types of iron workers did seemingly death defying stunts every day but this one isn’t quite as casual or dangerous as commonly presented.
People do all sorts of risky seeming stunts involving heights all the time. Here’s a kid dangling off a bridge with one hand & here’s another kid doing it on video, definitely no photoshop. Here’s a kid doing it on a radio tower & here’s a lady dangling in an evening gown.
Compared to these, sitting on a girder is pretty trivial.
You know I never thought about it but if they had added just a few more guys they could of had a whole “The Last Supper” thing going on, would have been cool.
Note the air quality in all the pictures, and also the formality of dress. Hate to be jumping around on those beams with a suit on.
The Cherokees I knew who worked high iron always claimed the photo was staged and retouched. Them I trust and always believed.
Every time I watch this I nearly faint. These guys are nuts. I’d be constantly attaching and reattaching the safety clips and always have at least one secure. But every one of those little steps they use is subject to rain and corrosion- if one gives way you’re toast. Yikes!
“Marvel at how little protection we offer our workers! Come visit the building constructed by a company with little regard for safety!”
The past is another country.
I wasn’t around then, obviously, but every one of those workers was very glad to have that job, given how desperate things were during the Great Depression. The Rockefeller Center complex was a big job creator at a time when people needed jobs.