The Construction of the Empire State Building in Colour
This footage of the Empire State Building’s construction gathers clips from contemporary newsreels and other sources and presents them in “restored, enhanced and colourized” form.
Today it’s ho-hum another skyscraper screwing up traffic but the Empire State Building was almost a miracle at the time. Prefabricated pieces built to tight specs so it could be assembled in a year. Men with large balls and Great Depression desperation doing dangerous things on a daily basis. Little details in this video struck me as interesting like the guy hand cranking the blower at 15:00 to heat the rivets to white hot and soft. However growing up with horses the thing that blew me away was the police horse walking sideways for just a second or two at 1:50.
When I was a child we lived near the Kahnawake Reserve (It was called Caughnawaga then) and I went to school with Mohawk girls whose fathers and grandfathers were steelworkers, many of whom had worked on constructing skyscrapers in NYC. Mohawk Skywalkers worked on the Empire State Building, the RCA Building, the Daily News Building, the Bank of Manhattan Building, the Chrysler Building, the United Nations, and Madison Square Garden.
Today it’s ho-hum another skyscraper screwing up traffic but the Empire State Building was almost a miracle at the time. Prefabricated pieces built to tight specs so it could be assembled in a year. Men with large balls and Great Depression desperation doing dangerous things on a daily basis.
ReplyDeleteLittle details in this video struck me as interesting like the guy hand cranking the blower at 15:00 to heat the rivets to white hot and soft. However growing up with horses the thing that blew me away was the police horse walking sideways for just a second or two at 1:50.
When I was a child we lived near the Kahnawake Reserve (It was called Caughnawaga then) and I went to school with Mohawk girls whose fathers and grandfathers were steelworkers, many of whom had worked on constructing skyscrapers in NYC. Mohawk Skywalkers worked on the Empire State Building, the RCA Building, the Daily News Building, the Bank of Manhattan Building, the Chrysler Building, the United Nations, and Madison Square Garden.
ReplyDelete