Lunch on the Beam of Rockefeller Plaza: The Secret Behind One of the Most Famous Photos of the 20th Century

Everyone probably knows the old photograph of 11 workers sitting on a beam located at a great height above New York. It always arouses not only interest, but also a lot of controversy. Most often, skeptics claim that this photo is a simple montage. But is it really so? How did this unique photo work appear and who are these brave people, resting, risking their lives?

In a photograph dated September 20, 1932, 11 construction workers sit quietly on a beam of the 30 Rockefeller Plaza skyscraper, one of the tallest buildings in the world at the time. Some are reading a newspaper, some are smoking, and the one on the far right is holding a bottle, although it’s unclear what it’s filled with.

This photo is not a montage, but a real shot, one of several taken on an autumn day, several months before the building was commissioned. Rockefeller Plaza, 30 is part of a huge business center built in the early 30s of the 20th century by the Rockefeller family of bankers.

The 260-meter-tall skyscraper, completed in 1933, needed advertising, and it was for this purpose that the famous photo "Lunch on a Skyscraper" was taken. Yes, this is a staged photo, but its heroes are real builders and are actually sitting at a great height without safety equipment.

In other, lesser-known photos from this series, workers are lying on the same beam and sitting, greeting the photographer. The author of the photo, unfortunately, is unknown, but we can confidently say that he is a very brave person and a true professional.

Cameras in the 1930s were quite large and working with photographic equipment on top of an unfinished skyscraper was difficult and dangerous.

But the names of most of the workers sitting on the metal structure were found out many years later. It turns out that an international group posed for the photographer over New York that day. Among the heroes of the photo were Americans, Irish, Swedes and even a Slovak, Gustav Popovic – he is the one sitting with a bottle on the far right.

It is known that Popovich carefully cut out the photo from the newspaper and sent it to his wife Marishka back home. He signed it with the following words: "See, I'm with a bottle as always."