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Witness History

Lunch Atop a Skyscraper

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.41.6K Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1932, a photo was taken showing 11 New York ironworkers casually eating their lunch while sitting on a steel beam at the top of a skyscraper. No safety harnesses, no helmets. Their legs dangle freely over the death-defying drop.

'Lunch Atop a Skyscraper' is now one of the most famous pictures in the world but it's an image surrounded in mystery. For years, the identity of its photographer and the 11 men have been unknown.

Christine Roussel, archivist at the Rockefeller Center, tells Vicky Farncombe about her mission to uncover the photo’s secrets.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.

Recent episodes explore everything from football in Brazil, the history of the ‘Indian Titanic’ and the invention of air fryers, to Public Enemy’s Fight The Power, subway art and the political crisis in Georgia. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: visionary architect Antoni Gaudi and the design of the Sagrada Familia; Michael Jordan and his bespoke Nike trainers; Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal; and Görel Hanser, manager of legendary Swedish pop band Abba on the influence they’ve had on the music industry. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the time an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the President of the United States in protest of America’s occupation of Iraq; the creation of the Hollywood commercial that changed advertising forever; and the ascent of the first Aboriginal MP.

(Photo: Lunch Atop a Skyscraper. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello, it's Lucy Wersley here and we're back with a brand new series of ladies swindlers.

0:07.5

Promise never to mention a word of what is going on.

0:10.0

Join me and my all-female team of detectives as we revisit the audacious crimes of women trying to make it in a world made for men.

0:19.4

This is a story of working class women trying to get by in a world made for men. This is a story of working-class women trying to get by.

0:24.3

This is survival.

0:25.3

Join me for the second season of Lady Swindlers, where true crime meets history with a twist.

0:31.3

Listen first on BBC Sounds.

0:46.4

Hi, you're listening to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Vicky Farncom.

0:50.8

This is the mystery behind lunch atop a skyscraper.

0:56.3

The iconic 1930s photo showing New York iron workers casually eating their lunch

0:58.2

while sitting on a steel beam 840 feet

1:01.8

around 250 metres in the air.

1:06.4

There are no birds in this story.

1:08.7

It's a plain tale of men who lark in high places.

1:11.8

It's the 20th of April, 1932. New York, once the epicentre of wealth and prosperity,

1:19.8

is struggling to cope after the financial disaster of the Wall Street crashed.

1:24.5

Nearly one in four of all the working population in search of a job.

1:30.0

Just please for any kind of work, but there was no work for the having.

1:34.9

And at the nearly completed RCA skyscraper, the centrepiece of Rockefeller Center, there's panic.

1:46.1

In the middle of this Great Depression,

1:48.9

how will the 70 stories ever be filled?

1:52.2

The Empire State Building at that point had been built,

...

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