Guide to the Erection Views Of Empire State Building : A Photograph Album Compiled by Starrett Brothers and Eken Incorporated
ca. 1929-1931

The Skyscraper Museum
39 Battery Place
New York, NY 10280

Phone: (212) 968 1961

URL: http://www.skyscraper.org

© The Skyscraper Museum. All rights reserved.

The Skyscraper Museum, Publisher

Processed by Sueyoung Park-Primiano and Olga Ganitch.

Machine-readable finding aid derived from a MS Word document dated: 2006. Machine-readable finding aid created by Brian Stevens. Description is in English.

Historical/Biographical Note

The "Erection Views of Empire State Building" is a hand-bound photograph album featuring a rich collection of original construction images, organized and compiled by the general contractors of the Empire State Building, Starrett Brothers & Eken, Inc. from 1929 to 1931.

In 2001, Karl Dudley "Hobey" Pierson, the grandson of Paul Starrett (1866-1957), one of the two brothers of Starrett Brothers & Eken, Inc. contacted The Skyscraper Museum about the photograph album when he came across the publication Building the Empire State (NY: W.W. Norton, 1998). The book reproduces a notebook compiled between approximately 1929 and 1931 by Starrett Brothers & Eken, Inc., which is part of the Museum's archive. This document, titled "Notes on Construction of Empire State Building," is a manuscript of 77 numbered sheets of typed text on notebook-sized graph paper and is part of the Records of HRH Construction (accession no. 1997.02). Interspersed throughout the notebook are 33 sheets of brown pressboard on which are mounted 70 black and white photographs, developed from the same negatives as some of the photographs found in the photograph album. A finding aid for this collection is available online on "VIVA History: Visual Index to the Virtual Archives of The Skyscraper Museum" website.

The collection of 511 photographs compiled in the 94-page album document virtually every step of the construction of the Empire State Building, from the demolition of the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel to the topping off ceremony of the mooring mast. It features many detailed mini-series of the myriad processes that were required of early 20th century skyscraper construction. Images featuring bricklaying, riveting, the setting of the limestone façade, among others, along with numerous candid photographs of construction workers on the job, relaxing at lunch, receiving paychecks, etc., as well as construction managers and such dignitaries as the famous Directors of the Empire State Company, including the former Governor of New York, Alfred E. Smith, at official ceremonies. In many ways the collection adopts the format characteristic of a handmade scrapbook, as if the Empire State Building itself was recounting the story of its creation, while also keeping the charm of a family album. This unique volume affords insights into both the technical aspects of the construction and the human face of the army of workers and managers that created New York's signature skyscraper.

In 2002, the photograph album was donated by Pierson to the Museum's permanent collection. The album and its pages were in extremely fragile condition and required immediate attention by a conservator prior to any handling. There were brittle pages with some of them torn at the bottom, and several handwritten captions are incomplete and not fully legible. In 2003, a conservator was hired to restore the photograph album. The individual photographs in the collection were then removed, assigned a unique accession number and scanned. The digital images were then captured onto archival CD-ROMs and copied to the Museum archival computer hard drive. In 2005 the digitized images of the photographs, along with the digitized image of the album intact, became a centerpiece of the Museum's online archive project VIVA2, as part of its continuing mission to narrate the multifaceted stories of the design and construction of skyscrapers.

Scope and Content Note

The photograph album is an embossed, leather-faced volume with the words "Erection Views of Empire State Building: Starrett Brothers and Eken Incorporated" handwritten on the black frontispiece. It measures 11 ¼ x 15 ½ in. and consists of 94 black mounting paper pages with 511 black and white gelatin silver photographs. It is formatted as a left bound, 2-holed, expandable leaf album bound with a single 6-ply cord string through a short metal tube and eye studs, which were placed in each hole.

Among the 511 photographs in the album, 507 are secured with photo corners, three to eight on each side of the pages, while four are loosely filed. Additionally, five photographs were missing prior to the album's arrival to the Museum, evidenced by captions detailing the photograph's content where the missing photos were once mounted. With the exception of the four loose items, whose captions are printed typographically below the image, each photograph is captioned with handwritten descriptions and usually the date and number. The assigned numbers are not sequential and are occasionally left off all together or letters have taken their place.

Most of the photographs are either 2 ¾ x 4 5/8 in., or 3 7/8 x 4 5/8 in. in size. Three separate pairs of photographs (item numbers 411-412, 504, and 505 below*) are combined to make one image and are 11 ¼ x 15 ½ in. in size. The four loose items are 10 ½ x 8 in. in size and are interfiled into the final pages of the album. These are commercial items with the "Publicity Department" logo, numbers, dates and descriptions printed beneath the image.

NB: The following item descriptions were transcribed directly from the volume in its original order and following original spelling. Text enclosed in brackets ([ ]) is provided by the Museum staff. Individual page numbers were also assigned by the Museum staff. The page numbers and the “es” numbers in brackets (e.g. [es0001]) correspond to their digital surrogates for the scanned page and the photograph.

Restrictions

Access Restrictions

Open for research without restrictions.

Use Restrictions

Permission to publish materials must be obtained in writing from the:
The Skyscraper Museum
39 Battery Place
New York, NY 10280
Phone: (212) 968 1961

E-mail: info@skyscraper.org

Administrative Information

Provenance

Donated by Karl Dudley Pierson on Feb. 19, 2002.

Preferred Citation

Published citations should take the following form:

Identification of item, date (if known); The Erection Views Of Empire State Building : A Photograph Album Compiled by Starrett Brothers and Eken Incorporated; 2002.05; box number; folder number;
The Skyscraper Museum

Processing Information

The arrangement and description of this collection was made possible with the support of a Learning Opportunities Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an independent Federal grant-making agency dedicated to creating and sustaining a nation of learners. The conservation of the photograph album was made possible with the support of the Conservation Treatment Grant Program administered by the Lower Hudson Conference, a re-granting agency of the Museum Program of the New York State Council on the Arts.

Container List

[The following section contains a detailed listing of the materials in the collection.]