Anna Randal for Art-Sheep
If you’ve been to New York, you have surely seen the famous Empire State Building. An iconic office building, known for its beautiful architecture, its elegance and its view. Also known as “the Most Famous Skyscraper in the World”, the Empire State Building was built during a very ugly era for the United States, the Depression of the 1930s.
What you probably haven’t seen though, is the process through which it was built, as the financial situation and the poor means didn’t provide the safest environment for contraction workers. The photographs below capture the danger and risk under which thousands of builders had to work, on a daily basis. After changing the design of the building 16 times, eventually 3,000 workers completed the building’s construction. It took them only one year and 45 days, including Sundays and holidays.
Until 1972, the Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world.
