Lunch atop a Skyscraper

Lunch atop a Skyscraper is a black-and-white photograph taken on September 20, 1932, of eleven ironworkers sitting on a steel beam of the RCA Building, 850 feet (260 meters) above the ground during the construction of Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, New York City.

[3][4] It was published in the Sunday supplement of the New York Herald Tribune on October 2, 1932, with the caption: "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper".

The Lunch atop a Skyscraper photograph was in the Acme Newspictures archive, a part of the Bettmann collection, although it was uncredited.

According to Ken Johnston, manager of the historic collections of Corbis, the image was initially received in a Manila paper envelope.

[6] In 2016, Visual China Group purchased Corbis's image division and content licensing unit, including the Bettman Archive and Lunch atop a Skyscraper.

It was often misattributed to Lewis Hine, a Works Progress Administration photographer, from the mistaken assumption that the structure being built is the Empire State Building.

The film confirms the identities of two men: Joseph Eckner, third from the left, and Joe Curtis, third from the right, by cross-referencing with other pictures taken the same day, in which they were named at the time.

The photograph was found in his estate, with the note "Don't you worry, my dear Mariška, as you can see I'm still with bottle" written on the back.

Sculptor Sergio Furnari modeled from it a 40-foot-long (12 m) statue, which was displayed near the World Trade Center site after the September 11 attacks.

[14] Discussing the significance of the image in 2012, Johnston said: There's the incongruity between the action – lunch – and the place – 800 feet in the air – and that these guys are so casual about it.