Mar 23, 2010 - Sale 2208

Sale 2208 - Lot 151

Price Realized: $ 19,200
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 25,000
HINE, LEWIS W. (1874-1940)
"Worker, Empire State Building." Silver print, 9 1/2x7 1/2 inches (24.1x19.1 cm.), with Hine's Interpretive Photography hand stamp and notations, in pencil, in an unknown hand, on verso. 1930
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Additional Details

From the collection of photographer Ernst Halberstadt; by descent to the present owner.

Men at Work, unpaginated.

An iconic image from Hine's award-winning book about the Empire State Building, MEN AT WORK, which shows a Mohawk laborer constructing "the seventh wonder of the modern world."


At the age of 46, Lewis W. Hine (1874-1940) was rejected by FSA chief, Roy Stryker, as too old to join the agency and become one of its staff photographer. Nevertheless Hine found assignments from the new picture magazines, such as Fortune, and from colleagues associated with the social welfare agencies, like the Tennessee Valley Authority.


One of his best series of images from this later period is the construction of the Empire State Building. Hine was hired as chief photographer by his Hastings-on-Hudson neighbor, Richard Shreve, a partner in the architectural firm that designed the building, Shreve Lamb and Richmond. This spectacular print shows a Mohawk worker, one of many on the crew, laboring feverishly on a lower floor. Months later, as the towering skeleton tower began to ascend, Hine was hoisted on a cherry picker, 90 plus stories above the city bustline streets, to record the last months of the project.


The building, which was constructed at the outset of the Depression, was considered the folly of Gov. Al Smith. Nonetheless,, it was erected in a year's time, part of an intense competition in New York for the title of "world's tallest building". Two other projects fighting for the title, 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler Building, were still under construction when work began on the Empire State Building. Each held the title for less than a year since the Empire State Building surpassed them upon its completion.


It was the world's tallest building for more than forty years. Today it remains one of the biggest tourist attractions in New York City, if not the world.