[Applause] 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 [Applause] nation 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 bed'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 will 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 Joseph Pitzer 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 Pitzer launches the biggest fundraising campaign ever seen in North America it would be an irrevocable disgrace to New York City and the American ameran 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 pitzer's papers every day enclosed please find 25 cents is my cont the contents of our little Savings Bank which weer resolved to send you the contents of the first jackpot you will find and clothes $4 the money we save 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 ft High the pedestal will be the biggest concrete structure in the world over 200 men work through a ruling 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 Gustav Eiffel who build the famous Eiffel Tower in Paris the skeleton is 151 ft tall and with the pedestal it's the height of a 30-story office block [Music] [Music] [Music] now for the outer layer wrapping around the skeleton are 60,000 lb 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 ft in the air it's as difficult as it is dangerous [Music] 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 ft long a fingernail weighs 3 1/2 lb the scale of Liberty is unimaginable [Music] [Music] [Applause] after 6 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 said the sculptor Frederick August boldi modeled the face on his own mother [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] 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 give me your tired your poor your huddled masses yearning to breathe free The Wretched refu of your teeming Shore send these the homeless temp tossed to me I lift my lamp beside the golden door over the next two decades more than 12 million immigrants passed 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 20 almost 50 year history 95% of the people were not here uh there there are no roots they all came from someplace else so to me uh America represents the the best of the human Spirit a guide book prepares arrivals for a new life in a new world 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 18 80 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 mega cities 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 is much too expensive steel one man will change all that and with it the face of America he'll risk everything and almost lose it all it's 1872 and Andrew Carnegie a 5'3 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 is even used in designer jewelry but a 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 besser 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 freefall 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 3000° 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 airanes even space travel none of it can happen if steel can't be mass-produced it's a success [Music] 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 [Music] 1900 so many American stories of success uh are diligence uh 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 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 [Music] 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 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 ft drop a sudden gust of wind and it's all over they're up here 8 hours a day meals when they can no bathroom breaks they're called rough necks European immigrants and Mohawk Indians many were Sailors and Bridge workers so they're used to Heights [Music] the guy's balancing on the beams I think it took a lot of Bravery I think it took a lot of skill a lot of you know physically um 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 starit sums up his dangerous job building skyscrapers is the nearest peacetime equivalent of War even to the occasional Grim reality of an accident where named 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 rough necks 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 flat iron 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 [Music] 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 Flat Iron's extreme shape damage a nearby shot 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 sto mostly at five floors no more walking upstairs now so the sky is the limit for the first time the higher the floor the higher the rent you think it's a fairly humble invention but uh 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 10 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 ripe on the streets but these Mavericks are about to make a difference 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 Nos and jaw broke $10 ear chewed off $15 the big job a 100 bucks and up detective bureau chief Thomas Burns a man who follows his own set of rules he's rude 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 Burns 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 his very manner size of him his menacing shoulders and arms the bark of his voice Pick Pockets forgers whoever cracked a 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 Burns is tackling this problem headon and bringing police work into a new age this is his Rogues Gallery mug shots of 7,000 known law Breakers using photography to identify criminals will change detective work forever Annie royy Alias Little Annie deceitful servant the mug shots are distributed to police departments around the country but these are more than just pictures Burns is also building psychological profiles of criminals Rufus Miner 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 got to 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 [Music] 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 they were windowless tenaments sometimes you had no internal Plumbing 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 Reese Danish immigrant crime reporter photographer he gets leads for stories from Chief Inspector Burns now he's about to expose the hell of tenements Jacob ree knows what it's like to be poor 15 years ago he lost his job in a stock market crash it's midnight but Reese 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 this is one of the first ever photographs of Slum life it shocks Millions ladies and gentlemen my name is Jacob a Reese and this is how the other half Live and Die in New York City magazines refus to print his work so Reese 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 at this block Nine Dead were carried out this year alone five and baby coffins what he demonstrated was that there is another reality um that all that Prosperity didn't trickle down all the way to the bottom and there were 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 ree 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 tenaments sell at auction for as little as a dollar Reese's 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 because of this filth but one clean Crusader is about to change everything 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 3T High piles of human and animal waste into this world steps a man on a white horse Colonel George wearing Civil War veteran legendary sewer engineer Apostle of cleanliness he's the head of New York sanitation department the city stinks with the emanations of putrifying organic matter black rottenness is seen and smelled on every hand the crowded streets are a veritable hell wearing recruits an army of 2,000 sanitation workers in white uniforms some dismiss him as a crank they call his men white ducks but wearing means business tons of garbage normally dumped into the river is recycled Ash becomes landfill on Riker's Island organic waste boiled into oil and grease wearing is America's first Eco Warrior his men clean 433 Mi of Street death rates decline water quality improves wearing saves the lives of thousands the measures spread across America just 16 years after kernel wearing half of all cities have waste ction and it is not just waste by 1907 every large city in the nation has sewers by 1909 there are 42,4 Mi 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 Meno 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 247 in one of the world's first first R&D Labs it will generate more than a thousand patents America still lights the knif 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 light bulb Platinum [Applause] 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 he claimed to have gone through 6,000 materials from uh the plant world alone in his search for the the perfect filament to LJ Spruce beard fish line thread teak boxwood s ly [Music] 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 when Thomas Addison invented that light bulb that electric light bulb what a how magical that must have been you know to sit there and just all of a sudden like without a match without kerosene or gas and just flip a switch light in Just 2 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 5 years he builds over 127,000 more by 1902 18 million light bulbs 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 otus electric elevators Bell telephones Singer sewing machines but packing so many people into tll buildings is a disaster waiting to happen [Music] the United States is hurtling into the Modern Age symbolized by mega cities rising up all across the continent by 1909 Americans are spending nearly $23 billion a year on ready-made clothes this Factory is producing 12,000 garments a week known as shirt waste they're the latest fashion for the working woman New York City March 25th 1911 4:45 p. m.
the Triangle shirt waist Factory 8th floor 260 girls work here most of them teenagers someone we don't know who tosses a match or maybe a cigarette into the scrap bin Eva Harris a seamstress smells burning there's a fire Mrbarstein production manager Samuel Bernstein grabs one of the three fire pales but the fire is already spreading [Music] 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 come on 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 10th floor hello switchboard 10th floor fire there's a fire put me through to the ninth floor 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 the60 workers trapped there but blocking the front door there's a barrel of motor oil 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 everyone was knocking him crying for the elevator to come up Suddenly the elevator came and the girls rushed in I was searching for my sister Rose but I couldn't find her 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 arrived with the biggest ladder in New York City but it's 30 ft Too Short 4:58 p. m. the girls trapped on the ninth floor are out of options [Music] in desperation they jump 5:15 p.
m.
