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THE RIVETER: $1.92 PLUS HALF A CENT AN HOUR
The putting together of the open steel framework of the Empire State Building revealed one distinct difference from the framework of the skyscrapers being put up today.
It was full of rivets.
And its construction was audibly different from todayâs methods of building.
Riveting made such an infernal racket that New Yorkers wrote angry letters to the newspapers about the noise.
A test had already shown that welded joints were stronger than riveted joints in construction. But, in the 1930âs, the riveting gang was still the center of activity in the building of skyscrapers. What they did held everything in place.
There were four men in a riveting gang. According to a news report of that time, they were called the âheater,â the âcatcherâ or âsticker,â the âbucker-up,â and the âdriverâ or âriveter.â There was also the young helper, or âpunk.â
The heater cranked the handle of his forge, forcing air up through the coke or charcoal fire, making it flaming hot and heating to an incandescent glow the 10 or more rivet bolts buried in the fire.
When the driver was ready for a new rivet, the heater took a hot cherry-red one out of his forge with his long-handled tongs. And with an underhand toss he hurled the smoking rivet straight at the catcher, who caught it in mid-air in his catching can. The catcher then grabbed it with his tongs, tapped it against a beam to remove any cinders, and jammed it into the waiting hole.
The bucker-up held the rivet in place with his heavy steel dolly bar while, facing him on the opposite side of the pieces being riveted together, the driver pressed the release on his hammer. Within seconds, and with a chattering outburst of noise, his end of the rivet was smashed into a wide cap, permanently bonding together two more sections of the skyscraper framework.
Today, the steel beams and girders of the cityâs skyscrapers are bolted together with special steel bolts and welded together. Compared with riveting, these connections are stronger, more quickly made, and require fewer men to accomplish.
At the peak of construction on the Empire State Building there were thirty-eight riveting gangs working from 8:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M.âwith half an hour off for lunch. The number of rivets set in place in a day depended on the size of the rivets, and whether the crew was straddling a cold steel beam with nothing much below them or working inside the protection of the building itself. A fast crew might set up to 800 rivets a day. Union scale for riveters was $1.92, plus half a cent, per hour, with double pay for overtime.
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THE DERRICK
There were as many as sixteen derricks working on the Empire State Building at the same time. Their size and lifting abilities varied, from those limited to a 20-ton load to the biggestâcapable of lifting the heaviest load needed, 44 tons.
Wherever possible, the derricks were positioned so that their booms overlapped, allowing material to be placed exactly where needed.
As construction proceeded and the derricks were raised to ever-increasing heights, their cables had to be lengthened to reach the hoist engines down below them. Holes were left in the newly poured concrete floors so the cables would have the most direct link between the hoist engines and the derricks.
The biggest hoist engines were ultimately placed on the 25th floor and the smaller ones on the 52nd floor, where the setbacks in the buildingâs design made it desirable to do so. At the greatest heights, the derricks had to raise the steel beams and columns in two separate liftingsâchanging over at the 25th floor.
Today the hoisting, the lowering, and the transfer of loads horizontally may still be done by derrick. The derrick is controlled by an operating engineer who is usually at a lower level of construction and doesnât see the actual loading or unloading of the tons of material he is moving about. In operating his controls, the engineer depends on signals from his loading and unloading bellmen.
During construction of the Empire State Building the bellman pulled on two cables, each attached to a separate bell next to the derrick engineer, who adjusted his winch cables according to the bells.
Today the engineer gets his signals from a bellman pressing buttons on a portable bell box which connects to, and activates, bells and lights at the hoist engine. The bells tell the engineer the function: to raise or lower the boom. The light signal, steady or flickering, is the speed of the function. When raising steel from a delivery truck to the top of an unfinished building, a bellman at street level will give the signals until the steel reaches the top; then a bellman on top takes over. The hoist engineer is located at a lower level, probably in a walled-off enclosure, and cannot see the derrick or the bellman.
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COURAGE . . . SKILL . . .
Workmen who built the Empire State Building were called men of courage, skill, daring, and imagination. They were architects, engineers, contractors, bosses, and construction workers of many varied skills. Using equipment now considered out of date, they put together the 102-floor framework of the building in less than six months, a feat which would be a considerable achievement even today.
In 1930, these workmen either went bareheaded, wore a cloth capâoften worn back-wardâor wore a battered felt hat. The rigid plastics needed for molded head protection, called âhard hats,â would not appear until after World War II.
They ate on the job, and, to save time, food was brought up for those who didnât bring their own lunch: two sandwiches, pie, and coffee or milkâall for 40 cents. At the peak of construction there were 3,400 workers. Fourteen of them died from accidents.
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. . . AND PREPARATION
Careful, detailed planning and much paperwork enabled the Empire State Building to be put up in record time.
A progress chart and a printed timetable were issued daily. These specified everything to be done that day, identifying each truck that would drive right in onto the first floor, what it would be delivering, and who was responsible to receive it and to use the materials it carried. Each steel piece was numbered to see that it went to the proper derrick and to indicate its proper place in the building. The other materialsâ75 miles of water pipe, 10 million bricks, 1,172 miles of wire for elevator cable, 50 miles of radiator pipe, more than 6,000 windows, 2 million feet of electrical wire, and 200,000 cubic feet of stoneâwent up by derrick sling or by elevator directly to the floor where it was scheduled to be used. A temporary, small narrow-gauge track system was installed on each floor as it was needed. This enabled the material to be moved from the truck at ground level onto dump carts, raised by elevator to the designated floor, wheeled onto the track, and moved quickly to the exact spot needed. Turntables built into the track allowed the carts to be shifted about in any direction.
The scheduling, organization, and attention to detail that characterized the building of the Empire State Building is part of skyscraper history.
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MIDTOWN MANHATTAN . . . ROCKEFELLER CENTER: 1931
Rockefeller Center is a wonderful place for people-watching. Its Fifth Avenue promenadeâthe Channel Gardensâand its sunken plaza invite visitor and New Yorker alike to enter, slow down, rest awhile, breathe a bit more easily, and enjoy the visual variety. People from all over the world stop by, carrying cameras. They take pictures of golden Prometheus and his backdrop of cascading water; they take pictures of each other.
They are in a horticultural oasisâunique in the cityâwhere imported exotic greenery changes as the seasons change. Where else would palm trees flourish just off Fifth Avenue ... or a Christmas tree weighing several tons suddenly appear to signal the beginning of the cityâs holiday season?
Planned as an integrated complex of buildings for business and entertainment, Rockefeller Center has been expanded since its inception in 1931. Today it has eighteen skyscrapers built about its central skyscraperâthe 70-story RCA Buildingâand it covers almost 22 acres of land in the heart of Manhattan.
Its planners envisioned the site with each skyscraper a unit in relation to each of the other skyscrapers, and to the Center itself. They planned for landscaped areas of open âcity spaceâ for light and air, with interconnected patterns of traffic flow, both pedestrian and vehicular, for ease of movement. This design concept was, in 1931, unique for its time, and Rockefeller Center has become a model for similar projects around the world.
The land on which a large part of the Center is built had already been leased in 1928, to be built upon by private builders. Then came the worldwide depression that began with the 1929 stock-market crash, and any idea of building was abandoned. Millions of people were out of work, and most large-scale construction in New York Cityâwith the exception of the Empire State Buildingâhad stopped. It was a time of despair and of caution. Yet, faced with a costly yearly lease, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., decided to develop the site, personally, as a private enterprise.
In human terms it was an enormous project. Two hundred twenty-eight delapidated tenements, shops, and other buildings had to be demolished and carted away. Four thousand tenants had to be relocated in new living and working quarters.
At a time of vast unemployment, at least 75,000 people were employed at the site, and 150,000 others worked elsewhere, preparing the materials used in the construction.
Rockefeller Center was a civic enterprise on a major scale, as well as a construction project of enormous size.
Its open spacesânearly one-fourth of the land space has been left unbuiltâwith promenades, plazas, trees, flowers, and sculpture, and the lower plaza with its ice-skating rink in winter and outdoor dining in summer, make the Center a focal point in midtown Manhattan. Nearly a quarter of a million people use, or visit, Rockefeller Center daily. ...
