
The Magnificent Empire State Building: Hope rises out of despair in 1931
The construction of the Empire State Building began in March 1930, and it immediately became a contradiction of its times. It was truly a spectacle, with thousands of jobless and hungry New Yorkers standing on the sidewalks watching the steel skeleton begin to take shape. The emotions of the onlookers swung from awe to resentment and anger. “How do they have money for this?”a man muttered to a reporter, “when half the city can’t afford shoes?” Another woman, watching the steelworkers balance on beams hundreds of feet above the ground, said, “It’s beautiful. And it’s terrible. They’re building a monument while the rest of us are trying not to drown.”