The Building of Manhattan Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright © 1987 by Donald A. Mackay All rights reserved.

  Bibliographical Note

  This Dover edition, first published in 2010, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, in 1987.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mackay, Donald A.

  The building of Manhattan / written and illustrated by Donald A. Mackay. p. cm.

  “Unabridged republication of the work originally published by Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, in 1987.”

  9780486135908

  ISBN-10: 0-486-47317-1

  1. Building—New York (State)—New York—History. 2. Manhattan (New York, N.Y.)—History. 3. Public works—New York (State)—New York—History. 4. New York (N.Y.)—Buildings, structures, etc.—History. I. Title.

  TH25.N5M33 2010

  690.09747’1—dc22

  2009031302

  Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation

  47317102

  www.doverpublications.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  PREFACE

  IN THE BEGINNING

  THE MANHATTAN INDIANS

  AND THEN THE DUTCH CAME

  WOOD, STONE, AND BRICK

  FORT AMSTERDAM

  STUYVESANT SURRENDERS

  1664: NEW AMSTERDAM IS NOW NEW YORK

  COLONIAL NEW YORK: 1664-1783

  MECHANICKS, SLAVES, AND APPRENTICES

  CAPITAL OF THE NEW NATION: 1785-1790

  1811: A PLAN FOR GROWTH

  POPULATION PRESSURES: 1811—1850

  THE CAST-IRON BUILDING

  THE “SAFETY HOISTER” RAISES THE ROOF

  THE WONDER OF THE IMAGINATION

  THE SKILL OF THE ENGINEER

  THE IRON SKELETON

  “AN IRON BRIDGE TRUSS STOOD ON END”

  1850 TO 1900

  THE FLATIRON BUILDING: 1901

  THE WOOLWORTH BUILDING: 1913

  BOOM AND BUST: 1900—1930

  THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING: 1930— 1931

  THE RIVETER: $1.92 PLUS HALF A CENT AN HOUR

  THE DERRICK

  COURAGE . . . SKILL . . .

  . . . AND PREPARATION

  MIDTOWN MANHATTAN . . . ROCKEFELLER CENTER: 1931

  OUT OF THE DEPRESSION: 1930—1965

  DOWNTOWN MANHATTAN . . . THE WORLD TRADE CENTER: 1966—1971

  KEEPING THE HUDSON RIVER OUT

  A PROBLEM IN LEVITATION

  CARRYING THE WEIGHT

  A CITY WITHIN THE CITY

  ZONING: AN ATTEMPT TO SET RATIONAL LIMITS

  THE ARCHITECT: CONCEPT AND DETAIL

  THE CITY’S VITAL SERVICES

  THE BUSY UNDERGROUND

  THE SUBWAY

  WATER FIT TO DRINK

  ELECTRICITY . . . LIFELINE OF THE CITY

  STEAM

  GAS

  TELEPHONE

  AND EMPIRE CITY SUBWAY

  SEWAGE

  GOING . . . GOING . . .

  . . . GONE

  TEST BORINGS

  AND DRILLING ROCK

  THE POWER OF COMPRESSED AIR

  THE EXCAVATORS

  DYNAMITE!

  STAND CLEAR!

  HARD HATS

  WHO DOES WHAT AT A CONSTRUCTION SITE

  THE SURVEYOR

  SHORING UP THE OUTER WALLS

  THE FOUNDATION

  DIGGING IN LOWER MANHATTAN

  BULL’S LIVER AND OTHER PROBLEMS

  AS THE CITY BUILDS

  CONCRETE

  THE REINFORCED CONCRETE SKYSCRAPER

  FROM LIQUID MASS TO HARDENED SOLID

  SALAMANDERS

  THE BIG CRANES

  TOWER CRANES

  ASSEMBLING A TOWER CRANE

  RAISING THE CRANE’S HEIGHT

  PRIVATE PLACES PUBLIC SPACES

  STEEL

  STEEL

  AND IRONWORKERS

  LOOK OUT BELOW!

  SPUD WRENCHES

  FROM BEAM

  TO BEAM

  THE WELDER

  THE FLOORS TAKE SHAPE

  THE OUTER SKIN

  TRADES AND UNIONS

  UP AND DOWN . . . AT 20 MILES AN HOUR

  SKYSCRAPER STRESS

  ACROPHOBIA ... FEAR OF HEIGHTS

  THE SOUNDS OF THE CITY

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  SOURCES

  PREFACE

  Artists are lucky. Once they are seen to be actually drawing something, they are generally accepted as part of the landscape. Busy Manhattan construction sites are no exception, if the artist keeps out of the way, and once it has been determined he is not an inspector. He can stand around, tolerated, in all kinds of places, for long periods of time, doing nothing but watching other people work. Of course he may not be making any money, but that’s another part of being an artist. What he may be doing, even if he’s not yet aware of it, is accumulating material for a book like this.

  Almost thirty years ago a drawing I made of the construction of the Chase Manhattan Bank in lower Manhattan had been put away and forgotten. By chance, all these years later, I met foundation engineers of the consulting firm that worked on the foundation and they described for me the method used to stabilize the “quick” sand encountered during the excavation. Pure luck, and the drawing is now part of the book.

  This is not a textbook, but I hope it is factual enough to please the concrete worker who said he’d like his children to see what it is he does for a living. And repay the ironworker I talked with during his lunch break. Asked how fireproofing is applied to steel framework he said, “I’ll show you.” You follow, only to be stopped by a supervisor’s “What are you doing here?” You show him what you’re drawing and he takes you down temporary wooden stairs into the unfinished depths of the sub-basement. There you step into another world, a brightly lit office filled with working drawings and schedules, closed off from all the outside commotion. He has you sign an insurance liability release, tells you always to borrow a hard hat and to come back on Saturday when he’ll have time to talk. Not only does he talk, but you see fireproofing being applied. It’s slippery and messy, and its application on an off-day doesn’t interfere with other work operations. On another Saturday you expect to find out how heavy panels get anchored to the outer frame of the building but the foreman has had to bring in a crew on doubletime pay. It is not the time to ask questions. Later, on a weekday, he sees you and leads you up in the lift, up the outside of the building, to an open upper floor. Here his men are working right on the edge of the building, far above the street, carefully, with much physical effort, anchoring a panel into place. You acquire an admiration for all involved, as you keep away from the edge of the building. You also realize you are no longer just roaming around, you are committed to developing a book.

  The quick sketch you make in a situation like that is of details. There probably isn’t time even for that. What you saw you write down and sketch when you get out on the street, before you forget it. You may not know yet how it will fit into a drawing or where it will go in the book, or what questions to ask that will give the drawing logic or purpose. You take some quick photos. Only back in the studio can you work out what it is you wish to say and illustrate. It may be a composite drawing, from preliminary sketches and photos of similar work functions.

  Sometimes the aspect of the drawing is complete, as in the demolition of the building at 54th Street and Madison Avenue. I first saw this demolition from a bus, made a quick exit, and looked for a way to get above the scene. Around the 53rd Street corner is a tall building built when elevator lobbies had
windows. Sure enough, after checking out different floors I found a seldom used level with a perfect view above the entire demolition (page 82). Incidentally, the man who continuously sprayed water on the wreckage to keep down the dust got fifteen dollars an hour, and was waiting for the chance to do some demolition work himself.

  I am sure there must be gaps in the writing, from not knowing the right questions to ask. One very cold day I went upstairs in a fast-food place that overlooked a building under construction and a workman was there, having a cup of coffee. He was an inspector temporarily caught up with his work. His job was to climb the steel framework and check all the different size bolts as the steel was being erected, making sure each bolt had its correct number of washers and was tightened to its own exact degree. Until then I had thought all bolts got tightened as tight as possible. Here was an answer to a question I never would have asked. Now I would watch for a worker tightening a bolt with a torque wrench. He’s on page 129.

  Jumping the tower crane is much more spectacular. I had talked with workmen who’d seen it done but couldn’t explain the sequence. I got a handsome booklet from the Iowa manufacturer, but the procedure was somehow incomplete. I waited for days to see it happen. Only then did it all become clear. People in the street smiled after seeing it done.

  A lot of wandering about the city is in these pages. It took a long time for it all to come together. The thoughts about the early days of New York began as family research on some Dutch ancestors who were here on Manhattan Island in its earliest days as a tiny settlement. Like the construction sketches, that part just grew in size until one day it seemed fitting to meld it into one bit of allegiance, to the city and its people.

  March 1987

  Ossining, New York

  No other city in the world has such a concentration of skyscrapers and large buildings as has Manhattan. It is a city always changing: building, tearing down, rebuilding. It digs deep below the surface, it reaches to the sky.

  It puts together enormously complex buildings with seeming ease and grace, in the midst of busy streets.

  The traffic flows by. New Yorkers hurry on ... and watch.

  It is a scene well worth watching—enormous energy and creative imagination are at work.

  New York City—on the Island of Manhattan—in less than 400 years has grown from a small Dutch trading post into today’s awe-inspiring panorama of architectural and engineering marvels.

  Built on a unique geological underbase, at the head of a great natural harbor, it is one of the wonders of the world.

  IN THE BEGINNING

  Manhattan Island is of very recent ori of very recent gin, in geological time.

  Its creation as an island is one of the latest episodes in the long history of the titanic forces that have altered the landscape of New York.

  It has been rocked by massive earthquakes, squeezed, shaped, and twisted. Periods of volcanic activity spewed forth molten lava. At one time a vast inland freshwater sea covered the entire area.

  Geologists take the birth of Manhattan back more than a billion years. They record three eras of major high-mountain formation. Erosion, wind, rain, and ice slowly reduced those ancient alps in the ongoing process of land transformation.

  About 70 million years ago the present island shape of Manhattan began to be formed, well before the great ice ages first appeared two million years ago.

  Then, 10,000 to 18,000 years ago, the forward edge of the last great ice sheet ground inexorably southward, pushing gravel and enormous rocks, scouring the earth, and burying Manhattan Island under a massive wall of solid ice. The sheet of ice moved forward onto Staten Island, along the reach of Long Island... and stopped.

  So great was the amount of water locked into this vast worldwide ice formation that the ocean level at Manhattan was 330 feet—100 meters—lower than it is today.

  As this ice slowly melted and the glacial front retreated northward, torrents of rushing water carved the bed of the Hudson River ever deeper, the ocean rose to its present level, and New York’s great natural harbor was formed.

  The earth’s outer, solid continuous crust, its bedrock, now lay just below and sometimes above the surface of Manhattan Island in two distinct areas: the downtown tip of the island and at midtown.

  It is primarily on these two areas that Manhattan’s skyscrapers have been built. Their tremendous height and weight rest securely on this solid bedrock, which is chiefly a silvery gray rock known as Manhattan schist.

  THE MANHATTAN INDIANS

  These Manhattan Island Indians lived in Manhattan in family groups, or clans, under their sachems. or chiefs, whose title was passed on through the female line in each family. Their tribe, the LENAPE, was made up of the many family groups. Archaeologic evidence indicates that their ancestors were living on Manhattan Island and along the Atlantic Coast at least 3,000 years ago.

  These Indians had few material possessions but had achieved a remarkable ability to live in harmony with their natural surroundings. Over thousands of years they had adapted from a nomadic hunting people to an agricultural society. They believed in the magic power of all objects in nature, good and evil spirits, an afterlife, and a supreme being, the “Great Spirit.”

  Their many festivals were held in relation to the earth’s seasons. They painted themselves with natural colors mixed with animal fat, and adorned themselves with ornaments of metal, bone, feathers, and shells. They had great powers of endurance.

  We know the names of some of these Manhattan clan groupings: Rechtank, Werpoes, Shepmoes, Sapohanikan, Rechewanis, Co-·nykeeks, Muskuta, Machicanituk, Penadnik, Shorakapkok, Nipnichsen.

  They had no concept of owning land, freely using what they needed and moving on to another locality within their tribe’s territory when the fertility of the land where they had been living was exhausted. They and their ancestors had lived on Manhattan for untold generations. They would vanish soon after the arrival of the European white man, leaving behind only some artifacts, some trails which would become roadways such as the Bowery and Broadway, and the name of the island — Manhattan.

  The earliest known depiction of Nieuw Amsterdam: The Hartgers view, 1628

  AND THEN THE DUTCH CAME

  While Giovanni da Verrazano, for France, and Estavan Gomez, for Spain, had sailed separately into the waters of New York Bay many years earlier, the first European to explore thoroughly the waters around Manhattan Island was Henry Hudson. An Englishman in the service of the Dutch, he came in 1609, looking for a northwest passage to the Orient.

  Instead, he found Manhattan Island, heavily wooded, with great stands of hickory, oak, and other hardwoods. Large clams and oysters, as well as much small game, provided food for the Indians, who, it was reported, were dressed in “Mantles of Feathers, and some in Skinnes of divers sorts of good Furres.”

  The lower tip of the island had many hills, which in later years would be leveled down, while the northern part was of a much greater height, with rocky outcroppings. Small streams, swamps, and ponds were all about. Robert Juet, an officer of Hudson’s ship, wrote, “This is a very good Land to fall with, and a pleasant Land to see.”

  In 1613, Adriaen Block, who had been to the Hudson River in 1611, returned to spend the winter on Manhattan Island on a fur-trading venture. His ship, the Tyger, caught fire, and its remains beached at the site of today’s World Trade Center Plaza. His men set to work felling trees and built a new ship, of about 18 tons, the first large work of building not by Indians on the Island of Manhattan. Block sailed this new boat into Long Island Sound and then on to Cape Cod.

  The first permanent settlement, of huts “of the bark of trees,” was begun in 1625. In 1626, on the 26th of May, Peter Minuit, as director general of the Dutch West India Company, bought the island from the Indians — all 20,000 acres — for 60 guilders’ worth of cloth, trinkets, and beads. It came to about a penny for each 10 acres.

  According to its charter, the Company was to “promote the settlement of
fertile and uninhabited districts, and to do all that the service of those countries and the profit and increase of trade shall require.” The whole purpose of New Amsterdam, as the tiny settlement on the tip of the island was named, was business.

  Ten years passed before private ownership of property was allowed. Then these early Dutch built their own houses, of wood with thatched roofs. Soon brick houses with tile roofs became common. In 1642 the Dutch West India Company built a tavern to accommodate the increasing numbers of people visiting and passing through New Amsterdam. This tavern, which sold the Company’s wine and brandy, had its own well and brew-house. It became the City Hall in 1653.

  From its very beginnings, the town had building and land disputes. In 1654 one Frederick Arentsen, a turner of wood, bought a lot from Teunis Tomasen, a mason, who agreed to take part of the price in chairs. Arentsen insisted on having the lot “delivered to him at thirteen inches to the foot.” Tomasen protested, in court.

  On June 8, 1654, Teunis Tomasen was again in court, demanding 13 florins from Michael Paulisen, for whom he had built a chimney according to contract. The chimney smoked and Paulisen had had it pulled down and rebuilt by someone else, at a cost of two beavers. He said he did not owe the debt. The court decided in favor of Tomasen: since defendant Paulisen “at his own pleasure had the chimney taken down and rebuilt, plaintiff cannot be prejudiced thereby.”

  Many of these early chimneys were wooden, above thatched reed roofs. Fire was a constant danger to the town. If a house burned down due to the negligence of the owner, he was fined 25 guilders. Four fire-warders were appointed to inspect all chimneys: an unclean one was fined three guilders, with the money used to maintain the town’s fire ladders, hooks, and leather water buckets.

  Director General Peter Stuyvesant and his council, in 1647, ordered people who had been granted lots to put up proper buildings on them, or the lots would be taken from them and given to people who wanted to build and were in need of a proper place.