In the 60s and 70s a new complex was built with four new towers, one of which houses News Corporation and Fox News. ‘Lunch atop a Skyscraper’ was taken during the final few months of construction. The building began in May 1930 and took nine years to complete.
When it began, the construction of the 14 Rockefeller Center towers was the largest private building project undertaken in modern times. The 80-year-old photograph is also the subject of a new film titled Men At Lunch, which was shown at the Toronto Film Festival earlier this month and puts forward evidence that the some of workers hail from the small Irish town of Shanaglish. With safety issues in place, the photograph has been re-created multiple times with copycat snaps taken all over the world from a group of workers 800ft above the streets of London to a less risky cartoon version on U.S. Seemingly echoing this, one of the most striking points about the photograph is the mens' lack of safety harnesses despite the 840 feet drop beneath them. Nevertheless, huge-scale construction projects begun during the boom years of the 1920s were nearing completion.Ĭommentators have suggested that during the economic depression men were willing for to take on any work regardless of safety issues. Indeed, the photo was taken while the city was in the depths of the Great Depression when one in four New Yorkers were unemployed. Recently arrived in the city, the Irish natives came to Manhattan seeking employment at a grim economic time. The man sitting fourth from the right is allegedly Francis Michael Rafferty with his lifelong best friend, Stretch Donahue, sitting to his right. However, over the years family members have come forward to identify the men and it's been claimed that the majority of the workers are Irish immigrants.
Corbis attempted to track them down 12 years ago but were not able to establish conclusive identities for any of them. The Rock: The construction of the 14 Rockefeller Center towers was the largest private building project undertaken in modern timesĪs well as the photographer, the names of the construction workers also remain a mystery.
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