Astonishingly, no list of workmen was ever compiled, and the stories of those who labored on the building were never told. This erasure also embodies an aspect of the American experience—albeit a more painful part. The United States has long attracted and benefited from immigrants whose ambition and hard work have helped the country reach new heights. But too often, those workers never received the rewards and recognition they deserve.
If you enter the building today through its grand Fifth Avenue portal, the first thing you’ll see at the opposite end of the imposing lobby is a stainless steel depiction of the structure itself. At the base of this two-story-tall wall relief, beneath the stylized rays blazing from the structure’s Art Deco mast, a plaque names the architects, the general contractor, and the corporate owners. Consult any of the conventional histories of the building’s record-breaking construction—or ask ChatGPT right now—and these men will be credited with building the historic landmark.
And yet, ten steps to the right of the stainless-steel plaque identifying the architects, contractors, and owners, you’ll find a smaller, bronze plaque, unlit and perched inconspicuously above a radiator grille. This other commemorative plaque lists the names of 32 men who received Empire State Craftsmanship Awards. These 32 craftsmen constitute the majority of workers whose names have come down to us. Few as they are, they provide a new answer to the question of who built the Empire State Building. And amazingly, photographs of them have been slumbering in archives or circulating unidentified for almost a century.
Owen Scanlon, marble setter’s helper —Hiram Myers—Empire State Building archive, 1930-1969, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University
Glazier Samuel Laginsky was born in 1894, in Teplik, Russia, now Teplyk, Ukraine, about 180 miles south of Kyiv. An Ellis Island manifest, dated April 21, 1906, documents his arrival in the United States, along with his mother and brother. Their passage was paid for by Samuel Laginsky, Sr., a boarder at 257 Monroe Street in Brooklyn, a three-story brownstone that still exists.
Samuel Laginsky, glazier —Lewis W. Hine—Empire State Building archive, 1930-1969, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia UniversityJames Irons, stonecutter —Lewis W. Hine—Empire State Building archive, 1930-1969, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University
Some of the workers were the sons or grandsons of immigrants, like Adam Bigelow, Craftsmanship Award-winner for dampproofing. At the time of his work on the Empire State, Bigelow was 28 and lived in Union City, New Jersey, with his wife and two stepchildren. When I contacted his great niece, she also thought several members of the family may have worked on the Empire State. Indeed, I found a cousin, Henry Bigelow, who received his own Craftsmanship Award for dampproofing in October 1932 for work on the Union Inland Terminal. “As far as Adam,” his great niece wrote me, “he was born and raised in Hell’s Kitchen in a large family. The family seemed to marry and slowly move one by one and buy houses in Bergen County in the Carlstadt/Rutherford area. Some of them making a brief stop in the Union City, North Bergen area of Hudson County as they moved from working poor to middle class.” Adam’s son, William, became a roofer like his father and grandfather. One of William’s sons, Adam’s grandson, became the professional wrestler, “Bam Bam” Bigelow, who died in 2007 of a drug overdose.
Adam Bigelow, dampproofer —Lewis W. Hine—Empire State Building archive, 1930-1969, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia UniversityVictor Gosselin, ironworker —Lewis W. Hine—Empire State Building archive, 1930-1969, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University
Captured in some of Lewis W. Hine’s most dramatic photographs of the building’s construction, and thrillingly interviewed in “The American” magazine in June 1931, Frenchy has become archetypal for the American worker in the 1930s, his image used in countless textbooks and finally appearing on a 2013 U.S. Postage Stamp in the series, “Made in America: Building a Nation.” In fact, he was born in Saint-Étienne-de-Lauzon, Levis, across the St. Lawrence River from Quebec, Canada. Genealogical records go back to his great-grandfather, also a native of Quebec. Nicknamed “Frenchy” by fellow ironworkers and celebrated as a symbol of the American character, research indicates Gosselin belonged to the Kahnawake Mohawks, the Native Americans whose territory straddled the U.S.-Canadian border before these countries existed.
To John Jakob Raskob, the Empire State’s primary financier and at the time one of the country’s richest men, the building represented “a land which reached for the sky with its feet on the ground.” Today, even 56 years after it relinquished the title of world’s tallest skyscraper, it remains an abiding symbol of American pride and achievement. But knowing something about the lives of the workers who built it allows us to understand more specifically what the majestic skyscraper stands for.The men who built the Empire State Building were not “anonymous workers.” They were not cartoon figures. Like the Craftsmanship Award winners, like the men pictured in Lewis W. Hine’s masterful photographs, they were Americans with names and complex histories. The building may stand in the popular imagination as the symbol of an American ideal. But for men like Owen Scanlon, Samuel Laginsky, James Irons, Adam Bigelow, Victor Gosselin, and their families, it was the very medium to realize that ideal, the pathway by which they rose into the middle class. On the 95th anniversary of their achievement, perhaps it’s time to honor these workers by name. As much as the owners, architects, and contractors, they, too, built the Empire State Building.
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