Originally known as the Bank of Manhattan Trust building, the building was designed by H. The photos ultimately capture the awe that such a skyscraper, and its construction, inspired in the 1930s, a feat difficult for modern audiences to grasp, now that nearly every medium-sized city in the world has skyscrapers.40 Wall Street is a 70-story skyscraper located in New York City. The steel and machinery often seem to gleam, in contrast with the hazy, seemingly insignificant buildings in the distance. In Hine’s photos, the sun and sky create stark contrasts of black and white. (Interestingly, it is believed that only five people died during the construction of the Empire State Building.) Of course, they are actually a slip of the hand or foot from death. Often they seem to be floating, even dancing gracefully. The men in Hine’s photos are lean, muscular. Then, in March of 1930, just seven months after Smith and Raskob announced the construction of the Empire State Building, Hine was commissioned to document the skyscraper’s rise. He photographed conditions in Europe for the Red Cross after World War I, then returned to Ellis Island in the 1920s to document efforts to improve conditions at the immigration center. His portraits were studied for all that they revealed about their subjects. By this point, Hine’s work was coming to be considered not just crusading but sociological. He became a teacher at the Ethical Culture School and, according to biographies, took up the camera around this time, believing that images could be as powerful, if not more so, than words.įollowing his Ellis Island series, Hine’s photos of child laborers opened many eyes and were part of a broader movement to expose and put an end to the use of child labor. He brought this belief in progress and reform to New York in 1901. Born in the progressive hotbed of Wisconsin, Hines' political outlook was further honed at the University of Chicago.
It was the first of many progressive photographic projects for Hine. From 1904 to 1909, Hine documented the hardships as well as the happiness, mystery, and daily grind of the Ellis Island immigration process. Waves of Italians and Jews from Eastern Europe were arriving every day at Ellis Island, along with Finns, Germans, Poles, and Hungarians. The Irish were still coming (such as the laborer whose memorable portrait he took in 1908), but these were also the days of the so-called “new” immigration.
Lewis Hine was in his late 20s, and only in New York City for a few years, when he and his camera were drawn to Ellis Island in the early 1900s. Though it is a work of fiction, Empire Rising is a rich, informative look at how the Irish helped build the Empire State Building. The result was his thrilling 2005 novel, Empire Rising. Kelly decided to look more deeply not only into his uncle’s past but into the celebrated skyscraper he helped build. Briody got mixed up in some shady business, was murdered and buried in the Bronx. Kelly had heard family stories about his uncle. Laborer Michael Briody would probably be forgotten had he not been New York Irish novelist Tom Kelly’s great-uncle. Still, the project was good news for at least one group of people: Irish-American laborers desperate for work. The problem? It might turn out to be the biggest real estate boondoggle in American history. The Empire State Building would still go up. Raskob, Smith and the other bigwigs who saw dollar signs at the vast corner of 34th Street and Fifth Avenue would have to adjust their vision. Less than two months after this announcement, the stock market crashed.
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