Chicago Pneumatic Helps Build One of the 7 Wonders of the Modern World
At the launch of the Great Depression, an architectural marvel of high steel and lofty ambitions sprouted from the former site of Manhattan's most luxurious hotel, and Chicago Pneumatic helped make it happen.
The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, built in the 1890's on the once-suburban estates of John Jacob Astor's heirs, was the playground of Manhattan's rich and socially elite. The hotel complex, on the block bordered by Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, was not only full of history and high society, but was constructed to stand for generations to come.
But times changed. The hotel's owners wanted to move to upscale Park Avenue, and sold the property to an engineering company. A development company headed by former New York Governor Alfred Smith and former General Motors Chairman John Jakob Raskob knocked the first stone cornice from the hotel's tower in a symbolic ceremony in late October 1929. Four days later, the stock market crashed and plunged the nation into the deepest depression it had ever known.
Despite dire economic conditions, the company's leaders surged ahead with their vision. Men hungry for work and eager to feed their families during that cold New York winter pulled apart the ground levels of the former hotel with their sledgehammers and pneumatic tools, designed to create destruction as easily growth.
It was tough work demolishing the solidly-built hotel. But like the hotel, Chicago Pneumatic tools were also built to last. They were up to the task of drilling through the tough Manhattan bedrock and the hotel's sturdy foundation. Compressors, rock drills, and other tools joined the task. Men used these powerful tools as they pounded 40 feet deep into the island's strata, to lay groundwork for the architectural marvel the Empire State Building would become.
Once the foundation was in place, the hotel rose quickly. Construction began on March 17, 1930, and proceeded at an electrifying pace of 4-1/2 stories per week. Hundreds of men worked at a feverish speed to erect the newly-dubbed "skyscraper" in a way that had never been done, with steel beams and rivets. The beams would arrive so quickly from the foundry, that sometimes they'd still be warm.
But holding 50 stories of steel together was no easy task. Each beam had to be secured with rivets heated to a glowing-red temperature and hammered in place with pneumatic hammers. The teams of riveters would work with the precision of a high-flying trapeze team -- not one could make a mistake, or everyone risked loss.
Each team of four included a "heater," who would heat rivets in a foundry until they glowed red, and toss them with three-foot tongs to a "catcher," who would catch them in a tin can or bucket from 50 or more feet away. The catcher used his own tongs to place the red-hot bolts into their holes in the steel beams, where a "bucker-up" would support them. From there, a "gunman" would hoist his 3-foot pneumatic hammer with its trailing air hose and smash the rivets into place as sparks flew, forming a cap.
This was hot, dangerous work performed high off the ground, while precariously balanced on a skeleton of steel. The noise from the pneumatic hammers was ear-splitting, with as many as two rivets per second being driven all day long -- 80,000 to 100,000 in all. But the men only needed to look at the lines of those eager to take their place on the sidewalk below to keep working. Citations are scarce about what brands of tools these workmen used, but Chicago Pneumatic headquarters moved to a new office on nearby 44th street in 1920, and company citations place them at the site.
The record-breaking work was done 13 months after it began. The spectacle that had drawn crowds to watch the men of high steel at work, was now drawn to the finished building called "one of the 7 architectural marvels of the modern world."
On May 1, 1931, President Herbert Hoover pressed a button in Washington, D.C. to officially turn on the lights. Chicago Pneumatic had done its part, and moved onto other landmark projects like New York's Lincoln Tunnel, the Chicago subway system, and eight dams comprising the Tennessee Valley Authority flood control and power generation project. Those strong, sturdy tools that built American landmarks are still doing that job today.
