A Cat’s Cradle

Lewis Hine at the Empire State Building in 1931, “Hoisting a large beam”:

Putting aside the minor quibble that the piece of steel in question is a column rather than a beam, that’s an incredible photo. All of the vertical or angled, tapered, trussed steel members are crane masts or boom arms; all of the cables are stays for the masts or supports for the arms. I’m reasonably sure that the crane nearest to us on the far left is the one lifting the column that is suspended about four feet above the working deck. Based on where the men are clustered, I suspect this column section is going to either the stub up from below in the center foreground (in front of the fellow leaning at 45-degrees) or the stub near the left end of the column.

In the background on the left, we see where the next tier of two-story-high columns and some of the associated beams have been partially erected.

The situation was less crowded than it looks. The cranes were far away from one another, so it’s not like all those cables were going to get tangled, but keep in mind that the rigging had to move up as the frame grew. The steelwork at Empire State went up amazingly fast, and I tend to think of that in terms of the enormous amount of riveting required and the organization needed for getting the steel to the storage-constrained site in the right order and on time. But keeping those cranes safely operating as they were raised, and laying out their swings and stays, was a huge task on its own.