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The Simpsons parodied Lunch atop a Skyscraper with one of the couch gags in this episode. http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/The_Dad_Who_Knew_Too_Little http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_couch_gags
Note that the correct title of this article should be "Lunch atop a Skyscraper" and not "Lunchtime Atop a Skyscraper". Perhaps someone with sufficient privileges can move it? -- 84.151.227.46 19:45, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't think it's significant that one publisher cares to capitalize this preposition. As for reproduction rights, it's not a matter of asking for permission to place an image on WP; instead, it's one of asking for a small version of the image to be copylefted, or more precisely released with the GFDL. -- Hoary 13:03, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
It's undoubtedly posed, though there is some dispute regarding the safety net (if there was one, it doesn't seem to me to diminish the effect). But what I'm most interested in from others is the background on the photo. Who were these 11 men? How did Ebbetts come to conceive the shot? Backstory, please, I can not find any elsewhere. Mrbrianlk 01:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Who were these men? My sister and I think the 3rd from the left was our Grandfather, Bernhard Lawrence. His physical looks (short stubby legs) and dress make him a match. He made his living in NYC working buildings and bridges so it fits. We would like to know the names of all in the picture.
Noabaak ( talk) 20:57, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
It does not matter if the photographer staged the photo or not. When you frame it, you ARE controlling the scene as well and that kind of argument has been a dead issue for several years. But my questions is After 70 years, how come this photograph still copyrighted though many had been sold by Times, etc? Anybody?
13 years later, I moved it back to 'Atop', as that is was most of the WP:RS report. Example: [2], [3], etc. – Kavyansh.Singh ( talk) 21:59, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
We too are very interested in knowing some of the names of the men in the picture Lunch On A Skyscraper. Interestingly, we recognize the third man from the left as possibly a blood relative of Harry W. Schwalm. Every detail of this man could pass for Harry's twin. Is there any source identifying these men? PopNOma ( talk) 17:19, 30 December 2007 (UTC)Ricky Schwalm
There is a pub in Laytown, Ireland named "Gilnas" that has the photos and the names of all the men on it . most are native Irish, It is several years ago I saw it. They should still have it over the fireplace in the main bar. —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
86.42.145.132 (
talk) 20:27, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
In 1986 I was in the area of Port Stewart when I came across the same photo, with other photographs of the now older men, pointing to who they were in the photograph. Some had been taken in that pub ( I can't remember the name of the pub ), but it looked like a re-union, and would hold with the native Irish claim. It has followed me around ever since! Here it is again!! Tintin47 ( talk) 22:43, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
There is an issue with ninth worker some time his name mentioned as Stretch Donahue but in the article it's a Peter Sausage. Here is an example http://quigleyscabinet.blogspot.com/2009/06/photography-of-lewis-hine.html -- Ayvengo21 ( talk) 16:14, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
This articles doesn't provide vital information that most readers would naturally expect for such a peculiar image:
Man at the right with bottle in his hand is Gusti Popovic, sawyer from Eastern Slovakia - Spiš. He sent this photo in 1932 as a postcard to his wife to Slovakia with words: "Don't worry my dear Mariska, as you see I'm always OK with my bottle. Yours Gusti." (Slovak: "Nič še ty neboj, moja milá Mariška, jak vidziš, ta ja furt s fľašečku. Tvoj Gusti.")
This section of the article should be referenced closer or removed.-- Bosintang ( talk) 05:36, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
This edit, in which a sourced claim (well, kind of sourced) was deleted and replaced by an unsourced claim, was merely the latest grisly development in the embarrassingly bad section purporting to identify the men in the photo.
Most of these claims are entirely unsourced. Until a recent edit of mine, the claim that The eighth man has been identified by a nephew as Francis Michael Rafferty; the ninth man is his lifelong best friend, Stretch Donahue [my emphasis] was "sourced" (note 5) to this, wherein somebody unimaginatively calling themself "Anonymous" writes in a comment appended to somebody else's blog entry: "My great Uncle is the fourth one from the right Francis Michael Rafferty, the gentleman to his right is his lifelong friend Stretch Donahue." (Incidentally, why did Wikipedia have "nephew" and not "niece"?)
With the conceivable exception of an article in an Irish newspaper (once available on the web, but seemingly no longer), even the best among the sources cited here are junk. Some person claims that this or that person is the same as his or her grandpappy, great-uncle, or whatever; and gets a journo to quote this or (the Swedish example) writes it himself. This is very, very feeble stuff.
Compare V-J Day in Times Square. I wouldn't propose that as a model for this article: its coverage of the competing claims is verbose. But at least there is citing of attempts to verify, attempts whose crappiness isn't blazingly obvious.
I therefore propose to delete this entire section. Material about identities can be reintroduced IFF the material cites at least one article that itself shows signs of critical intelligence (and therefore scepticism). -- Hoary ( talk) 10:29, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
The third attempt by somebody to add an unsourced claim that her Pa was in the photo (and simultaneously to remove the [feebly] sourced claim that it was somebody else) prompted me to remove all the unsourced claims, which of course should never have been added in the first place.
The few remaining "sourced" claims are themselves highly dubious. They all depend on the say-so of some descendant, with little or no evidence of any fact-checking by the publication. If a disinterested historian investigates the matter and publishes the result somewhere credible, I'll think that this section should be based on these findings. I still think that the section as it is now should be scrapped. -- Hoary ( talk) 01:16, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
Fourth man from the left is said to be William O'Driscoll from Newfoundland. Added in this edit by 174.119.66.166
There's a related picture Men-Asleep-on-a-Girder of some of them napping after the meal, although I'd have to imagine it was also staged to some effect. Perhaps there should be a link or some quick discussion of this picture in the article? There's a good writeup and more pictures here. Nerfer ( talk) 20:22, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
Read the stuff above. You'll see that purported (but worthless) identifications have been added to the article for some time.
In this edit, an IP replaces the unsourced claim that one man was "John Patrick Madden" with the unsourced claim that he was instead "Peter Rice, A Mohawk ironworker from Kahnawake Canada".
As the article says, There have been numerous claims regarding the identities of the men in the image. And none of them has any value whatever, unless reliably sourced.
I have therefore just now removed from the article:
The source that appears to be adduced for this is " Oběd na vrcholu mrakodrapu: jak to opravdu bylo". It's in Czech. I can't read Czech. I can, however, have my browser show that none of "Eckner", "Breheny", "Svensson", "Madden" or "Rice" appears in that page. So the claims for Eckner, Breheny, Svensson, Madden and Rice have not been accompanied by a source and are worthless.
No more unsourced claims of identification, please. -- Hoary ( talk) 23:59, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
Pinging User:Gbreheny (who has just made this edit):
-- Hoary ( talk) 00:41, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
Does this really need to be there? It contains only one "fact"---which is an anecdote about a British sports team irrelevant to a photo of construction of an American building. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:810D:22C0:1AA4:957C:4BD5:4CEA:B8CC ( talk) 22:46, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
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the pic of the grave by the 14th reference is confusing
http://www.slovenskezahranicie.sk/data/7508031e51f45ed9cfa4908c1ad4062f.jpg
it shows that his wife has died in 1930 so he couldn't send her a letter in 1932... 93.88.216.35 ( talk) 00:18, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
There are several mentions of these people being men, but there is no source to prove that's how they identify. We should update the language to "people" until there are sources that prove how they identify. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Enbylicious ( talk • contribs) 03:09, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Moved czar 04:09, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
Lunch Atop a Skyscraper → Lunch atop a Skyscraper – Per MOS:TITLECAPS (atop being a preposition of fewer than five letters). Related, but not dispositive, is the fact that the file page on Commons uses lowercase atop. Deor ( talk) 22:39, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
Hello! This is to let editors know that
File:Lunch atop a Skyscraper - Charles Clyde Ebbets.jpg, a
featured picture used in this article, has been selected as the English Wikipedia's
picture of the day (POTD) for September 20, 2022. A preview of the POTD is displayed below and can be edited at
Template:POTD/2022-09-20. For the greater benefit of readers, any potential improvements or maintenance that could benefit the quality of this article should be done before its scheduled appearance on the
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Lunch atop a Skyscraper is a black-and-white photograph taken on September 20, 1932, of eleven ironworkers sitting on a steel beam 850 feet (260 m) above the ground on the sixty-ninth floor of the RCA Building (30 Rockefeller Plaza), then nearing completion, at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, New York City. It was arranged as a publicity stunt, part of a campaign promoting the skyscraper. The photograph was first published in October 1932, during the construction of Rockefeller Center. Photograph credit: unknown, possibly Charles Clyde Ebbets
Recently featured:
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In 1995, Corbis Images, a company that provides archived images to professional photographers,...
Why would professional photographers want to buy archived images? Corbis is a stock photo agency, and its customers are media (or advertising) enterprises. 2A02:AA1:1001:B042:E1E7:CBEF:5B71:B04 ( talk) 14:00, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
Not noticed this separation of English sources and non-English before.
Why do this? Most people in the world can read more than one language.
Is there a Wikipedia policy? EDLIS Café 17:53, 14 August 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by EdRicardo ( talk • contribs)
Information to add to the "Legacy" section of this article: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/09/lunch-atop-a-skyscraper-rockefeller-center-new-york 98.123.38.211 ( talk) 16:18, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
![]() | Lunch atop a Skyscraper has been listed as one of the Art and architecture good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it. | |||||||||
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![]() | A
fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the "
Did you know?" column on
May 27, 2022. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the "
most famous picture of a lunch break in New York history" (pictured) was actually a publicity stunt? |
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() |
Daily pageviews of this article
A graph should have been displayed here but
graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at
pageviews.wmcloud.org |
The Simpsons parodied Lunch atop a Skyscraper with one of the couch gags in this episode. http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/The_Dad_Who_Knew_Too_Little http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_couch_gags
Note that the correct title of this article should be "Lunch atop a Skyscraper" and not "Lunchtime Atop a Skyscraper". Perhaps someone with sufficient privileges can move it? -- 84.151.227.46 19:45, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't think it's significant that one publisher cares to capitalize this preposition. As for reproduction rights, it's not a matter of asking for permission to place an image on WP; instead, it's one of asking for a small version of the image to be copylefted, or more precisely released with the GFDL. -- Hoary 13:03, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
It's undoubtedly posed, though there is some dispute regarding the safety net (if there was one, it doesn't seem to me to diminish the effect). But what I'm most interested in from others is the background on the photo. Who were these 11 men? How did Ebbetts come to conceive the shot? Backstory, please, I can not find any elsewhere. Mrbrianlk 01:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Who were these men? My sister and I think the 3rd from the left was our Grandfather, Bernhard Lawrence. His physical looks (short stubby legs) and dress make him a match. He made his living in NYC working buildings and bridges so it fits. We would like to know the names of all in the picture.
Noabaak ( talk) 20:57, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
It does not matter if the photographer staged the photo or not. When you frame it, you ARE controlling the scene as well and that kind of argument has been a dead issue for several years. But my questions is After 70 years, how come this photograph still copyrighted though many had been sold by Times, etc? Anybody?
13 years later, I moved it back to 'Atop', as that is was most of the WP:RS report. Example: [2], [3], etc. – Kavyansh.Singh ( talk) 21:59, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
We too are very interested in knowing some of the names of the men in the picture Lunch On A Skyscraper. Interestingly, we recognize the third man from the left as possibly a blood relative of Harry W. Schwalm. Every detail of this man could pass for Harry's twin. Is there any source identifying these men? PopNOma ( talk) 17:19, 30 December 2007 (UTC)Ricky Schwalm
There is a pub in Laytown, Ireland named "Gilnas" that has the photos and the names of all the men on it . most are native Irish, It is several years ago I saw it. They should still have it over the fireplace in the main bar. —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
86.42.145.132 (
talk) 20:27, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
In 1986 I was in the area of Port Stewart when I came across the same photo, with other photographs of the now older men, pointing to who they were in the photograph. Some had been taken in that pub ( I can't remember the name of the pub ), but it looked like a re-union, and would hold with the native Irish claim. It has followed me around ever since! Here it is again!! Tintin47 ( talk) 22:43, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
There is an issue with ninth worker some time his name mentioned as Stretch Donahue but in the article it's a Peter Sausage. Here is an example http://quigleyscabinet.blogspot.com/2009/06/photography-of-lewis-hine.html -- Ayvengo21 ( talk) 16:14, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
This articles doesn't provide vital information that most readers would naturally expect for such a peculiar image:
Man at the right with bottle in his hand is Gusti Popovic, sawyer from Eastern Slovakia - Spiš. He sent this photo in 1932 as a postcard to his wife to Slovakia with words: "Don't worry my dear Mariska, as you see I'm always OK with my bottle. Yours Gusti." (Slovak: "Nič še ty neboj, moja milá Mariška, jak vidziš, ta ja furt s fľašečku. Tvoj Gusti.")
This section of the article should be referenced closer or removed.-- Bosintang ( talk) 05:36, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
This edit, in which a sourced claim (well, kind of sourced) was deleted and replaced by an unsourced claim, was merely the latest grisly development in the embarrassingly bad section purporting to identify the men in the photo.
Most of these claims are entirely unsourced. Until a recent edit of mine, the claim that The eighth man has been identified by a nephew as Francis Michael Rafferty; the ninth man is his lifelong best friend, Stretch Donahue [my emphasis] was "sourced" (note 5) to this, wherein somebody unimaginatively calling themself "Anonymous" writes in a comment appended to somebody else's blog entry: "My great Uncle is the fourth one from the right Francis Michael Rafferty, the gentleman to his right is his lifelong friend Stretch Donahue." (Incidentally, why did Wikipedia have "nephew" and not "niece"?)
With the conceivable exception of an article in an Irish newspaper (once available on the web, but seemingly no longer), even the best among the sources cited here are junk. Some person claims that this or that person is the same as his or her grandpappy, great-uncle, or whatever; and gets a journo to quote this or (the Swedish example) writes it himself. This is very, very feeble stuff.
Compare V-J Day in Times Square. I wouldn't propose that as a model for this article: its coverage of the competing claims is verbose. But at least there is citing of attempts to verify, attempts whose crappiness isn't blazingly obvious.
I therefore propose to delete this entire section. Material about identities can be reintroduced IFF the material cites at least one article that itself shows signs of critical intelligence (and therefore scepticism). -- Hoary ( talk) 10:29, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
The third attempt by somebody to add an unsourced claim that her Pa was in the photo (and simultaneously to remove the [feebly] sourced claim that it was somebody else) prompted me to remove all the unsourced claims, which of course should never have been added in the first place.
The few remaining "sourced" claims are themselves highly dubious. They all depend on the say-so of some descendant, with little or no evidence of any fact-checking by the publication. If a disinterested historian investigates the matter and publishes the result somewhere credible, I'll think that this section should be based on these findings. I still think that the section as it is now should be scrapped. -- Hoary ( talk) 01:16, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
Fourth man from the left is said to be William O'Driscoll from Newfoundland. Added in this edit by 174.119.66.166
There's a related picture Men-Asleep-on-a-Girder of some of them napping after the meal, although I'd have to imagine it was also staged to some effect. Perhaps there should be a link or some quick discussion of this picture in the article? There's a good writeup and more pictures here. Nerfer ( talk) 20:22, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
Read the stuff above. You'll see that purported (but worthless) identifications have been added to the article for some time.
In this edit, an IP replaces the unsourced claim that one man was "John Patrick Madden" with the unsourced claim that he was instead "Peter Rice, A Mohawk ironworker from Kahnawake Canada".
As the article says, There have been numerous claims regarding the identities of the men in the image. And none of them has any value whatever, unless reliably sourced.
I have therefore just now removed from the article:
The source that appears to be adduced for this is " Oběd na vrcholu mrakodrapu: jak to opravdu bylo". It's in Czech. I can't read Czech. I can, however, have my browser show that none of "Eckner", "Breheny", "Svensson", "Madden" or "Rice" appears in that page. So the claims for Eckner, Breheny, Svensson, Madden and Rice have not been accompanied by a source and are worthless.
No more unsourced claims of identification, please. -- Hoary ( talk) 23:59, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
Pinging User:Gbreheny (who has just made this edit):
-- Hoary ( talk) 00:41, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
Does this really need to be there? It contains only one "fact"---which is an anecdote about a British sports team irrelevant to a photo of construction of an American building. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:810D:22C0:1AA4:957C:4BD5:4CEA:B8CC ( talk) 22:46, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Lunch atop a Skyscraper. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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the pic of the grave by the 14th reference is confusing
http://www.slovenskezahranicie.sk/data/7508031e51f45ed9cfa4908c1ad4062f.jpg
it shows that his wife has died in 1930 so he couldn't send her a letter in 1932... 93.88.216.35 ( talk) 00:18, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
There are several mentions of these people being men, but there is no source to prove that's how they identify. We should update the language to "people" until there are sources that prove how they identify. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Enbylicious ( talk • contribs) 03:09, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Moved czar 04:09, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
Lunch Atop a Skyscraper → Lunch atop a Skyscraper – Per MOS:TITLECAPS (atop being a preposition of fewer than five letters). Related, but not dispositive, is the fact that the file page on Commons uses lowercase atop. Deor ( talk) 22:39, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
Hello! This is to let editors know that
File:Lunch atop a Skyscraper - Charles Clyde Ebbets.jpg, a
featured picture used in this article, has been selected as the English Wikipedia's
picture of the day (POTD) for September 20, 2022. A preview of the POTD is displayed below and can be edited at
Template:POTD/2022-09-20. For the greater benefit of readers, any potential improvements or maintenance that could benefit the quality of this article should be done before its scheduled appearance on the
Main Page. If you have any concerns, please place a message at
Wikipedia talk:Picture of the day. Thank you! --
Ahecht (
TALK
PAGE) 05:35, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
![]() |
Lunch atop a Skyscraper is a black-and-white photograph taken on September 20, 1932, of eleven ironworkers sitting on a steel beam 850 feet (260 m) above the ground on the sixty-ninth floor of the RCA Building (30 Rockefeller Plaza), then nearing completion, at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, New York City. It was arranged as a publicity stunt, part of a campaign promoting the skyscraper. The photograph was first published in October 1932, during the construction of Rockefeller Center. Photograph credit: unknown, possibly Charles Clyde Ebbets
Recently featured:
|
In 1995, Corbis Images, a company that provides archived images to professional photographers,...
Why would professional photographers want to buy archived images? Corbis is a stock photo agency, and its customers are media (or advertising) enterprises. 2A02:AA1:1001:B042:E1E7:CBEF:5B71:B04 ( talk) 14:00, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
Not noticed this separation of English sources and non-English before.
Why do this? Most people in the world can read more than one language.
Is there a Wikipedia policy? EDLIS Café 17:53, 14 August 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by EdRicardo ( talk • contribs)
Information to add to the "Legacy" section of this article: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/09/lunch-atop-a-skyscraper-rockefeller-center-new-york 98.123.38.211 ( talk) 16:18, 9 December 2023 (UTC)