Lunch atop a Skyscraper

Lunch atop a Skyscraper freezes a moment that seems impossible to believe. Eleven ironworkers perch on a narrow steel beam, chatting and eating their midday meal, while New York City sprawls some 800 feet below their swinging boots. No harnesses hold them in place, no ropes, nothing at all between the men and the streets far beneath. Shot in 1932 during the construction of the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center, the photograph captured a time when the country was struggling through the Great Depression and steady work was hard to come by. These men climbed up every day to raise the skyline, trusting nothing but their own balance and nerve.

For decades, nobody knew who pressed the shutter. Today the credit goes to Charles Clyde Ebbets, who scaled the building himself to get the shot. A detail that catches many people off guard is that the scene was arranged as a publicity stunt to draw attention to the rising skyscraper. That staging takes nothing away from its honesty, though, because the workers were the real deal and they truly were sitting that far above the ground. The picture went on to become one of the most recognized images ever made, a quiet salute to the fearless hands that shaped modern New York.