Author interview: Jules Stewart, ‘Gotham Rising’

It has been said that the primary concerns of society can be deduced from the function and purpose of its tallest buildings. But this adage seems to be flipped on its head when we look at 1930s New York.

The Empire State, Chrysler building, Waldorf Astoria and Rockefeller Center, as well as dozens of other skyscrapers that were put up in Manhattan around this time were all dedicated to commerce and trade; this at a time when the United States economy was in tatters. At a time when bankers were notoriously prone to throwing themselves off their high-rise window ledges, the city continued to climb, giving them longer perhaps to regret their miscalculations.

In his new book ‘Gotham Rising’, Jules Stewart chronicles this fascinating decade that in so many ways defines the city we are so familiar with today: the city that never sleeps, so good they named it twice, the Big Apple; Gotham.

One of the reasons Stewart says he chose to write about New York in the 1930s was that “it’s just about the only decade in the city’s history that has a recognisable beginning and end”. The themes of the decade began in late October 1929 when the stock market crash on Wall Street brought an abrupt halt to the Roaring Twenties; it ended in early September 1939 with the outbreak of the Second World War.

“In the 1930s you had the worst economic meltdown that the US had ever experienced, but at the same time the city was bubbling. At the beginning of the decade there were of course the great skyscrapers: the Empire State and Chrysler buildings, which were finished in 1930 and 1931 respectively.”

Stewart goes on to say that the contracts for what were to be the tallest edifices ever built had been drafted in the 1920s at a time of considerably higher economic optimism, and yet the projects were seen through to the end, in part because they were simply too big to fail.

“They were truly architectural masterpieces in many ways,” says Stewart, “not least given the time-frame. The Empire State Building was put up in 13 months. We’re talking about 10 million bricks and something like 40,000 tonnes of structural steel.” This is something the author thinks couldn’t be replicated today.

建设w如此快速增长的原因as simply “because they could”. Up until this point in the architectural history of the city, buildings of any significance or permanence were made from masonry, which limited their height significantly. “But the advent of structural steel, which came from the Industrial Revolution and was taken to the States where it was produced at much lower prices, was an important factor. Another was the development of the elevator by the engineer Otis” (see below: ‘The only way is up’).

But the need to build upwards did not come about, as is so often thought, from the physical size constraints of Manhattan Island. The urban myth has it that the city, unable to expand sideways because of the Hudson and East rivers, was of necessity required to grow upwards. “But that’s not necessarily so,” says Stewart, who thinks that he main reason for upward expansion was a response to the changing economic character of Manhattan Island.

“It changed from being a manufacturing to a commercial centre, which meant that there was no longer the need for so many warehouses, factories and production centres. What you needed was buildings where you could put people in suits. While warehouses need to be on the ground, close to the dock with easy access, it doesn’t matter if you put people 30 floors up in the sky, so long as they can get there without having a heart attack.”

The Empire State and Chrysler buildings were only part of a much wider and intensive effort by the city to reach for the sky. Perhaps one of the greatest achievements of the decade was the construction of the Rockefeller Center. Comprising 19 skyscrapers between 48th and 51st streets, the complex – which is now a National Historic Landmark – was paid for entirely from the private purse of JD Rockefeller Jr, in spite of the recession.

Today, the centre is the world’s biggest tourist attraction, with more visitors than either the Great Pyramids at Giza or the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Stewart goes on to point out that the decade also saw the flowering of Art Deco structures such as the Waldorf Astoria on Park Avenue (that held the record for the world’s tallest hotel from 1931 when it was built to 1936). “And of course, this was also the age when jazz took over the city and New York entered the Swing Era, with great names such as Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa. And with the exception of the Met (which was late 19th century) all the great museums of the city opened their doors in the 1930s.”

At the same time there was a massive wave of immigration, with refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe arriving in New York “in droves, bringing their skills and knowledge.” These migrants became the labour pool for a series of large infrastructure projects. The man behind the expansion of New York was the controversial and unelected power-broking city planner and parks commissioner Robert Moses, who was responsible for the Triborough (now the Robert F Kennedy Memorial) Bridge and the Brooklyn-Battery Link, and who pioneered New York’s economic recovery after the end of the depression.

Moses is an important figure in ‘Gotham Rising’ because he is permanently at loggerheads with another great character, the city’s three-term mayor Fiorello La Guardia. “Moses was determined to see through his projects even if he had to knock down every tenement in the city to do so… and he got rid of a great deal of them.” At the same time, Franklin D Roosevelt was in the White House putting together a series of economic stimulus packages known collectively as the New Deal. “Of course, New York got the lion’s share of the New Deal, largely due to the close relationship between the president and La Guardia, despite the fact that these two men were as different as could be imagined in every respect.”

We all know that New York isn’t typical of the United States. But the message that comes through loud and clear from ‘Gotham Rising’ is that there have been moments when the Big Apple is almost independent from the rest of the country. This was never truer than in the 1930s when, while the nation teetered on the brink of financial collapse, New York reinvented itself as one of the greatest cities the world has ever seen.

‘Gotham Rising’ by Jules Stewart is published by I B Tauris, £20