( narrator )
A new generation. On a wild new frontier. Rising into the sky. Gleaming towers of steel. A bold new
urban landscape... and maybe America's greatest
invention... the modern vertical city. We are pioneers...
and trailblazers. We fight for freedom. We transform our dreams
into the truth. Our struggles
will become a nation. Captioning presented by<font color="#0000FF">
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> America: Land of Invention. Hot dogs, jazz, the elevator, skyscrapers. This is the story of
the greatest innovation of all: the modern vertical city. One world-famous icon
has come to symbolize it. Amazingly, we very nearly
didn't have it. It's 1885 and New York City
has a big problem. A magnificent gift, but with some
assembly required. Scattered across Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor
in 214 crates. They contain the largest
statue in the Western world. It's been donated by
the people of France to celebrate the centenary of
the Declaration of Independence. Built in Paris, broken down into
350 massive pieces for the journey
to America. That's the problem. The cost of reassembling it
would be astronomical-- money New York does not have. At least six other US cities are jockeying to
give it a home. New York City is in
danger of losing the Statue of Liberty. Not if this man
can help it. Joseph Pulitzer, tenacious newspaper magnate,
immigrant, self-made man. He owns the biggest
paper in the US, "The New York World." And he's determined to keep
Liberty in New York Harbor. Through his chain
of newspapers, Pulitzer launches the biggest fund-raising campaign
ever seen in North America. ( dog barking ) ( "Joseph Pulitzer" )
It would be an irrevocable
disgrace to New York City and the American republic to have France send us
this splendid gift without our
having provided even so much as a landing place
for it. We must raise the money ! More than a million people read
Pulitzer's papers every day. ( man )
"Enclosed, please find
25¢ as my contribution..." ( woman )
"$1, the contents
of our little savings bank, which we cheerfully
contribute..." ( man )
"... resolved to send you the
contents of the first jackpot. You will find enclosed $4." ( woman )
"The money we saved
to go to the circus with." Donations flood in from
all across the country, rich and poor,
East and West. Pennies and nickels, fives and tens,
even thousands of dollars. In all, a staggering
121,000 donations... more than enough to keep
this iconic statue in New York. I think a statue
is not just a statue. I think symbols
really matter. I think they
signify, in a big way. In fact, maybe they do more than reams and reams
and reams of legislation and paper and print. Now the real
work begins. To hold a statue 150 feet high, the pedestal will be the biggest
concrete structure in the world. Over 200 men work through
a grueling winter to complete it. As the last of
the cement dries, workers toss in their own
silver dollars for good luck. Next, Liberty's
enormous iron skeleton. It's designed by Gustave Eiffel, who will build the famous
Eiffel Tower in Paris. The skeleton
is 151 feet tall and with the pedestal, it's the height of
a 30-story office block. Now for the outer layer. Wrapping around
the skeleton are 60,000 pounds of
hand-sculpted copper. The sandal is 32 times bigger
than a human foot, the equivalent
of a size-879 shoe. It's on-the-job training often at 300 feet
in the air. It's as difficult
as it is dangerous. They need to fix
300 pieces of copper shell to the framework with more than
300,000 rivets. Her robes have over
4,000 square yards of copper. Her outstretched arm
is 42 feet long. A fingernail
weighs 3½ pounds. The scale of Liberty
is unimaginable. After six months of
hazardous construction, there are no fatalities and Liberty's
17-foot face is finally
winched into position. It's bigger than Lincoln's
on Mount Rushmore. It's said
the sculptor, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, modeled the face
on his own mother. It takes 25 years
for Liberty to oxidize and turn green. A functioning lighthouse
until 1902, the statue's official name is "Liberty Enlightening
the World." At first, a symbol of
the alliance and friendship between France and the 13 colonies in
the American Revolution. It will come to represent
much more. At the entrance
to New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty becomes
a beacon to the world and a welcome to millions. Later, a poem by Emma Lazarus
in her base celebrates America
as a land of refugees. ( woman )
"Give me your tired,
your poor, "Your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free, "The wretched refuse of
your teeming shore. "Send these,
the homeless, "tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside
the golden door !" Over the next two decades, more than 12 million immigrants
pass the Statue of Liberty on their way to Ellis Island, the first stop
for most new Americans. Imagine what it took
for someone to leave Eastern Poland or Lithuania or some village
in the mountains of Northern Italy and come all the way to this
strange place with nothing. Today, more than
100 million Americans can trace their roots
back to ancestors who came through Ellis Island. If you go back
only 150 years in our 200-and-almost-50-year
history, 95% of the people... were not here. There are no roots. They all came from
someplace else. So, to me,
America represents... the best of the human spirit. A guidebook prepares arrivals for a new life
in a new world. ( man )
Forget your
customs and ideals. Select a goal and pursue it
with all your might. You will
experience a bad time, but sooner or later, you will achieve
your goal. Don't take
a moment's rest. Run. And from Ellis Island, they
spread out across the continent. For the most part, Irish, Russians and Italians
to big cities, Germans to the Midwest, Scandinavians
to farmland. At the dawn of
the 20th century, eventually, there will be
more Italians in New York
than in Rome. From 1880 to 1930, nearly 24 million new immigrants
arrive in the US. A new era in
US history is about to begin. By the early 20th century, new urban megacities
around America are bursting to the seams and look to expand
in a new direction... up. But building these great towers demands a critical ingredient
that's much too expensive. Steel. One man will change
all that, and with it,
the face of America. ( narrator )
It's 1873 and Andrew Carnegie, a 5-foot-3 Scottish immigrant
iron millionaire, is in Sheffield, England. He's looking at the future. A revolutionary way
to make steel. Steel has been around
for thousands of years, but so expensive to produce, it's always been
a luxury item. 2,000 years ago it's used in
Oriental swords. It is even used in
designer jewelry. But America stands
at the brink of a new age. To build it, they need
steel-- and lots of it. It's the only material
strong enough for the towers
that will touch the sky. An English bullet maker
is showing Carnegie a new but simple
method of producing steel. He's stunned. Blast hot air
through molten iron. Carbon impurities burn off. You get the wonder
material. Steel. For the first time, it can be produced quickly
and inexpensively. If Carnegie can use this
Bessemer process to mass-produce it...
he'll own the future. Carnegie returns
to the States, to Pittsburgh, to start building the biggest
steel plant in the world. It'll be larger
than 80 football fields. It's a massive gamble. Carnegie risks everything
he's got on the new plant. But only months into
construction... disaster. A catastrophic
stock-market collapse. The economy is in free fall. He has to borrow
even more money and barely scrapes through. August 1875. Against all odds, Carnegie's giant furnaces
are ready to test. Steel production
is phenomenally dangerous. Inside, 5 tons
of molten metal. 3,000°. Hot enough to vaporize
a man in seconds. If it works,
it will make Carnegie one of the richest men
in the world. But there's
a lot more at stake. Skyscrapers, cars, washing machines, airplanes,
even space travel. None of it can happen if steel can't be
mass-produced. It's a success. Carnegie is the first ever
to mass-produce steel. Prices plummet by over 80%. Output rockets from
a few thousand tons in 1860 to 11 million by 1900. So many American stories
of success are diligence, perseverance, but there's an awful lot
of luck involved, too. His timing
couldn't have been better. It was steel that built
American cities, it was steel that
built American railroads, it was steel that built
American shipping. By the beginning
of the 20th century, he was one of the wealthiest
men in America. Pittsburgh transforms
from a sleepy town to the industrial
heart of the nation. Its population triples. Driven by a new steel railroad, millions of tons of steel are
transported across America, the raw material
to build the modern city. And the grandest of all
is New York. It's an era of
obscene opulence. New York is a playground for super-rich industrialists
and financiers. Wildly extravagant,
they smoke cigars rolled in $100 bills, their wives' hats--
studded with diamonds. This is the Gilded Age. Land values are the highest
in the world. There's only
one place to go... up. By 1902, 65 skyscrapers are being constructed in
Manhattan. This is one of them. It's called
"walking the steel." This man is 30 stories above
the street, his first time at this height. No harness
or safety rope. One slip... and he's dead. Veterans are called
"fixers." The novices are "snakes," because working with them
can be deadly. The old hands know
just how dangerous it can be. ( man )
Thing I hate worse
than poison is to take on a new man
when we're near the top. They all get used to it
or get killed. No hard hats. Just a 280-foot drop. A sudden gust of wind
and it's all over. ( wind whistling ) ( breathing heavily ) They're up here
eight hours a day, meals when they can. No bathroom breaks. They're called roughnecks, European immigrants
and Mohawk Indians. Many were sailors
and bridge workers, so they're used to heights. ( wind whistling ) ( breathing heavily ) The guys balancing
on the beams. I think it took
a lot of bravery, I think it took a lot
of skill, a lot of physically--
physically challenging. But I also think it-- you had to be
a little crazy. The stakes couldn't be higher. It's a risk
they are willing to take. The pay is $4 a day, twice the going rate
for manual labor. Foreman William Starrett
sums up his dangerous job. ( "William Starrett" )
Building skyscrapers
is the nearest peacetime equivalent of war. Even to the occasional grim
reality of an accident or a maimed body, even death, remind us that we are fighting
a war of construction against the forces of nature. He makes it. Many aren't so lucky. Two roughnecks
out of five die or are disabled on the job. Whether it's a builder
or an architect or... whatever, whoever had the imagination
to design and build some of the great
structures of New York, I'm inspired by. In 1902 in New York, this is what
the future looks like. The Flatiron Building, its triangular footprint
determined by the intersection of three streets, not two. The steel frame means
the outside can be hung in sections
like a suit of clothes. Now the walls don't
take the weight, the steel does. It's so radical,
when people first see it, they think it will blow over
and kill them. A lawsuit is filed
claiming winds focused by the Flatiron's extreme shape
damage a nearby shop. Today it's one of our
best-loved buildings. Inside, the other breakthrough that lets towers
rise into the clouds. The elevator. Before it, the tallest buildings
stop mostly at five floors. Noore
walking up stairs now, so the sky's the limit. For the first time,
the higher the floor, the higher the rent. You think it's a fairly
humble invention, but when Otis invented the first
really safe elevator, it enabled the growth
of the modern city, where people could come in,
build much taller buildings, get a much higher density
of people. And sure enough, by the end of
the 19th century, the urban population has
increased 87 times over. In Chicago alone,
in just ten years, they build 50 steel-frame
buildings, and in 20 years,
its population more than doubles
to almost 1.7 million. American cities are exploding. But for many, living in the shadow
of these new towers will prove even
harder than building them. In America in 1890, crime and poverty are rife
on the streets. But these mavericks
are about to make a difference. ( narrator )
Gangsters, murderers, thieves and fear are on
the streets. New tabloid newspapers splash crime
all over the front pages. In Chicago, you can rent a gun
by the hour. In the Sears catalog,
you can buy one for $12. In New York, a policeman
finds a list on a murdered gangster--
his rate card. Punches: $2. Nose and jaw broke:
$10. Ear chewed off: $15. The big job:
100 bucks and up. Detective Bureau Chief
Thomas Byrnes-- a man who follows
his own set of rules. He's shrewd. And he's very tough. Among his methods
is a technique his detectives call "the third degree." First degree: persuasion. Second degree:
intimidation. Third degree: pain. In four years, Byrnes claims he's
arrested 3,300 criminals. He solved the biggest heist
of the 19th century... nearly a $3 million
Manhattan bank robbery. Reporters call him the greatest
crime buster in the history of
the New York City police force. ( man )
His very manner. The size of him. His menacing
shoulders and arms. The bark of his voice... Pickpockets ! Forgers ! Whoever cracked
the safe... Unscrupulous rogues. Crooks are now afraid
of their shadows. They lead double lives. But tracking down
criminals isn't easy. There's no official ID, no birth certificates
or driver's licenses. If a criminal
is known in one town, he just moves
to the next. Criminals are anonymous. Byrnes is tackling
this problem head-on and bringing police work
into a new age. This is his rogues gallery, mug shots of
7,000 known lawbreakers. Using photography to
identify criminals will change
detective work forever. ( "Thomas Byrnes" )
Annie Reilly. Alias: "Little Annie." Deceitful servant. The mug shots are distributed
to police departments around the country. But these are more
than just pictures. Byrnes is also building psychological profiles
of criminals. Rufus Minor. He comes from
a very good family. It's a pity he's a thief. This is the first attempt to create
a national crime register. A city as diverse as ours is going to have
a significant crime problem that you've gotta be
on top of. Even today, mug shots
still catch criminals. 12 million are taken every
year nationwide. That's more than
the entire population of Ohio. And it all began with
the rogues gallery over 120 years ago. Any questions ? But crime isn't
the only problem plaguing urban streets. In many cities, slums are
reaching epidemic proportions. Multiple families crammed into
one small room. Human waste
pours into the streets, alleys and open courtyards. People were crowded in, there were windowless
tenements. Sometimes you hadno internal pl, just privies in
the basement, in the backyard, and the Lower East Side
during these years was the single most crowded
place in the entire world. Jacob Riis,
Danish immigrant, crime reporter, photographer. He gets leads for stories
from Chief Inspector Byrnes. Now he's about to expose
the hell of tenements. Jacob Riis knows
what it's like to be poor. 15 years ago, he lost his job in
a stock-market crash. It's midnight, but Riis
has a new technology that will change the public
perception of poverty forever. An explosive powder that
produces enough light to photograph in the dark. ( dog barking ) This is one of the first-ever
photographs of slum life. Go. ( dog barking ) It shocks millions. ( "Jacob Riis" )
Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Jacob A. Riis and this is how the other half
live and die in New York City. Magazines refuse
to print his work, so Riis puts on his own
"magic lantern" shows. His mission:
to show the nation's wealthy something they've
never seen before, filth and desperation
on their doorstep. In this block, nine dead were carried out
this year alone. Five in baby coffins. What he demonstrated was that
there is another reality, that all that prosperity didn't trickle down
all the way to the bottom, and there was some deplorable
living conditions and this country was not just forced to
confront those conditions but then was moved to begin
to deal with them. Riis publishes his pictures
in a book called "How the Other Half Lives." It will sell more
than 28 million copies. Within two decades, the worst of New York's slums
are torn down. Tenements sell at auction
for as little as a dollar. Riis' campaigning forces all New York schools
to build playgrounds and landlords
to install toilets inside apartments, not outside. It is the first step
in tackling the slums. But as cities keep on growing, an even bigger challenge
remains. In New York alone, nearly 40,000 die
in one year from diseases. ( dog barking ) Because of this-- filth. rrator) 1895. Our major cities
are drowning in filth. 120,000 horses dump half a million pounds
of manure into the New York
streets every day. Wagons are blocked by
3-foot-high piles of human and animal waste. Into this world steps
a man on a white horse, Colonel George Waring. Civil War veteran,
legendary sewer engineer, "Apostle of Cleanliness." He's the head of New York's
Sanitation Department. ( "George Waring )
The city stinks with
the emanations of putrefying
organic matter. Black rottenness is seen
and smelled on every hand. The crowded streets are
a veritable hell. Waring recruits an army of
2,000 sanitation workers in white uniforms. Some dismiss him as a crank. They call his men
"white ducks." But Waring means business. Tons of garbage,
normally dumped into the river, is recycled. Ash becomes
landfill on Rikers Island. Organic waste boiled
into oil and grease. Waring is America's
first eco-warrior. His men clean
433 miles of street. Death rates decline,
water quality improves. Waring saves the lives
of thousands. The measures
spread across America. Just 16 years after
Colonel Waring, half of all cities
have waste collection. And it is not just waste. By 1907 every large city
in the nation has sewers. By 1909, there are 42,040 miles
of sewers in America. The battle against filth,
crime and poverty has begun. But one of the city's
greatest innovations is still in its infancy. One man will change
the urban landscape forever. Menlo Park, New Jersey, 1879. Thomas Edison: inventor,
entrepreneur, showman. He was taken out of school
as a boy, but that won't stop him
from becoming synonymous with inventions that define
the modern era. He pushes his team hard, 24/7, in one of the world's
first R&D labs. It will generate
more than 1,000 patents. America still lights the night in the dangerous flicker of
candles, gas and kerosene. Edison thinks
he has a better idea, if he can get a filament to
burn slowly in a vacuum. The electric lightbulb. Platinum. Edison locks himself
in his lab, doesn't sleep for days. The stakes are high. His backers have sunk
$130,000 into his research,
millions in today's money. ( James )
He claimed to have gone
through 6,000 materials from the plant world alone in his search for
the perfect filament. Spruce. Beard. Fish line. Thread. Teak. Boxwood. Celluloid, parchment. Then something
extraordinary happens. Cardboard. A piece of
carbonized cardboard burns for 300 hours. It's going to change the way
people live forever. What Edison does is nothing less
than to banish the darkness. Now think of the meaning
of that. Think of what that
means to daily life. New Year's Eve 1879. Edison shows off
his new invention. Thousands of people flock
to his lab to see the future take shape. The Pennsylvania Railroad
arranges special trains to accommodate the crowds. ( man )
When Thomas Edison invented that lightbulb,
that electric lightbulb, what a-- how magical
that must have been. You know, to sit there
and just all of a sudden, without a match, without
kerosene or gas and just flip
a switch and... light. In just two years, Edison builds
more than 5,000 power plants, generating electricity
for cities like New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis
and New Orleans. Over the next five years, he builds over
127,000 more. By 1902, 18 million
lightbulbs are in use. The impact is massive. Sports, entertainment,
factories, stores all can now operate at night. And as electricity
comes to the cities, more and more people
arrive with it. By 1900,
nearly 4 million women are working in US cities. In just 40 years, that figure
has more than quadrupled. Urban factories
are pounding out 75% of all consumer products
in the US. Places like this,
modern steel-frame buildings equipped with all the latest
technology, Otis electric elevators, Bell telephones,
Singer sewing machines. But packing so many people
into tall buildings is a disaster
waiting to happen. ( narrator )
The United States is hurtling
into the modern age. Symbolized by megacities rising up
all across the continent. By 1909, Americans are spending nearly 23 billion dollars
a year on ready-made clothes. This factory is producing
12,000 garments a week. Known as shirtwaists, they're the latest fashion
for the working woman. New York City,
March 25, 1911. 4:45 p.m. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory,
8th Floor. 260 girls work here--
most of them teenagers. ( bell ringing ) Someone-- we don't know who-- tosses a match or maybe
a cigarette into the scrap bin. Eva Harris, a seamstress,
smells burning. Fire. There's a fire,
Mr. Bernstein ! Production manager
Samuel Bernstein grabs one of
the three fire pails... but the fire is already
spreading. There's a mad dash
for the exit, but it is too narrow. Only one at a time
can pass through. It's been designed that way so their bags can be
checked for stolen fabric. There's a fire hose... but it's not
working. There's no water ! The only way to
warn the floors above is through the switchboard
two floors up on the tenth floor. Hello, switchboard ? ( phone ringing ) Tenth floor. Fire, there's a fire. <i> Put me through
to the ninth floor !</i> She drops the phone
and runs to get help. The message never reaches
the ninth floor. Samuel Bernstein
races up the main stairs to help the 160 workers
trapped there. But blocking
the front door, there's a barrel of motor oil. ( screaming ) On the ninth floor, flames are already shooting
through the walls and windows. The girls on nine
rush to the fire escape, but it's locked. Only two escape routes are
left on the ninth floor: the elevator
and the metal fire escape. Kate Weiner makes it
to the elevator door, but she's lost her sister. ( "Kate Weiner" )
Everyone was knocking
and crying for the elevator to come up. Suddenly the elevator
came and the girls rushed in. ( all screaming ) I was searching for
my sister, Rose, but I couldn't find her. ( all screaming ) The flames were
coming toward me, and I was being left behind. I felt the elevator
was leaving the ninth floor for the last time. She's the last person to
get to the last elevator. More than 100 girls
are left behind to die. The only escape route left is the metal
fire escape... but it collapses. Firemen arrive with the biggest
ladder in New York City. But it's 30 feet too short. 4:58 p.m. The girls trapped
on the ninth floor are out of options. In desperation...
they jump. 5:15 p.m. The entire blaze is over in less than
half an hour. 146 people die in the Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory fire. There's a trial,
but the owners walk free. It remains the deadliest
workplace disaster in New York City history
until September 11, 2001. But some good
does come out of it. This dramatic tragedy
sparks a wave of reform, so you begin to get
new restrictions and a new conversation
about what to do to prevent this
kind of tragedy from happening. But it did not stop, of course,
that tragedy itself. ( alarm ringing ) Unions force management
to take responsibility for the lives
of their workers. The Life Safety Code
now used in all 50 states is a direct result
of this fire. It's why doors now open
outwards in public buildings, why automatic sprinkler systems or multiple exits
are now the law. The US and the modern city
grew up together. Typically new,
enormous and fast-paced, the megacity is one of America's
greatest inventions. Captioning presented by<font color="#0000FF">
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> Captioned by<font color="#00FFFF">
Soundwriters™</font>
