24 Facinating Vintage Photos of American Landmarks Under Construction

All of the below buildings and statues are now symbols of the American architecture and  recognizable landmarks in all over the world.

The collection below shows how they looked like under construction.

Take a look.



1.Brooklyn Bridge during construction, 1874.

Construction of the bridge began in 1869.The bridge was initially designed by German immigrant John Augustus Roebling, who had previously designed and constructed shorter suspension bridges, such as Roebling’s Delaware Aqueduct in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, and the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge in Covington, Kentucky.

2.World’s Fair Ferris Wheel construction, 1904.

The First  Ferris Wheel in the world, sometimes also referred to as the Chicago Wheel, was designed and constructed by George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. With a height of 80.4 metres (264 ft) it was the largest attraction at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, where it opened to the public on June 21, 1893.It was intended to rival the 324-metre (1,063 ft) Eiffel Tower, the centerpiece of the 1889 Paris Exposition.

3.Chrysler Building under construction, New York, 1929.

Upon completion, May 20, 1930, the added height of the spire allowed the Chrysler Building to surpass 40 Wall Street as the tallest building in the world and the Eiffel Tower as the tallest structure. It was the first man-made structure to stand taller than 1,000 feet (305 m). Van Alen’s satisfaction in these accomplishments was likely muted by Walter Chrysler’s later refusal to pay the balance of his architectural fee.Less than a year after it opened to the public on May 27, 1930, the Chrysler Building was surpassed in height by the Empire State Building, but the Chrysler Building is still the world’s tallest steel-supported brick building. As of November 2, 2011, the building’s height was surpassed by the under-construction One World Trade Center at the height of 1,106 feet

4.Construction of Disneyland, 1954.

The concept for Disneyland began when Walt Disney was visiting Griffith Park in Los Angeles with his daughters Diane and Sharon. While watching them ride the merry-go-round, he came up with the idea of a place where adults and their children could go and have fun together, though his dream lay dormant for many years.

5.Construction of George Washington section of Mount Rushmore monument, 1940.

Originally known to the Lakota Sioux as Six Grandfathers, the mountain was renamed afterCharles E. Rushmore, a prominent New York lawyer, during an expedition in 1885.At first, the project of carving Rushmore was undertaken to increase tourism in the Black Hills region of South Dakota. After long negotiations involving a Congressional delegation and PresidentCalvin Coolidge, the project received Congressional approval. The carving started in 1927, and ended in 1941 with no fatalities.

6.Construction of Hangar One at NASA Sunnyvale, California, 1931 – 1934.

Designed by German airship and structural engineer Dr. Karl Arnstein, Vice President and Director of Engineering for the GoodyearZeppelin Corporation of Akron, Ohio, in collaboration with Wilbur Watson Associates Architects and Engineers of Cleveland, Ohio, Hangar One is constructed on a network of steel girders sheathed with galvanized steel. It rests firmly upon a reinforced pad anchored to concrete pilings.

7.Construction of the Lincoln Memorial, 1914-1922.

Lying between the north and south chambers is the central hall containing the solitary figure of Lincoln sitting in contemplation. The statue was carved by the Piccirilli Brothers under the supervision of the sculptor, Daniel Chester French, and took four years to complete. The statue, originally intended to be only 10 feet (3.0 m) tall, was, on further consideration, enlarged so that it finally stood 19 feet (5.8 m) tall from head to foot, the scale being such that if Lincoln were standing, he would be 28 feet (8.5 m) tall. The extreme width of the statue is the same as its height. The Georgia white marble sculpture weighs 175 short tons (159 t) and had to be shipped in 28 separate pieces.

8.Construction of the Manhattan Bridge, ca. the 1900s.

In 1910, a year after the bridge opened, the architectural firm Carrère and Hastings drew up preliminary plans for an elaborate grand entry to the bridge on the Manhattan side, as part of the “City Beautiful” movement. Construction began that year, and plans were finalized in 1912. The arch and colonnade were completed in 1915. The decoration includes pylons which were sculpted by Carl A. Heber and a frieze called “Buffalo Hunt” by Charles Rumsey

9.Construction of the Space Needle, Seattle, ca. the 1960s.

Edward E. Carlson, chairman of the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle, originally had an idea for erecting a tower with a restaurant at the World’s Fair. Carlson was then president of a hotel company and not previously known for art or design, but he was inspired by a recent visit to the Stuttgart Tower of Germany. John Graham, an architect who had won praise for designing Northgate Mall in Seattle, soon became involved. Graham’s first move was to make the restaurant featured in the plans revolve, in the same manner as a tower he had previously designed for the Ala Moana Shopping Center in Honolulu.

10.Dodger Stadium under construction, Los Angeles, California, May 25, 1960.

Dodger Stadium was the first Major League Baseball stadium since the initial construction of the original Yankee Stadium to be built using 100% private financing, and the last until AT&T Park in San Francisco opened in 2000. The ground was broken for Dodger Stadium on September 17, 1959.

11.Empire State Building under construction, 1929-1931.

The Empire State Building was designed by William F. Lamb from the architectural firmShreve, Lamb and Harmon, which produced the building drawings in just two weeks, using its earlier designs for the Reynolds Building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and the Carew Tower in Cincinnati, Ohio (designed by the architectural firm W. W. Ahlschlager & Associates) as a basis.

12.Flatiron Building under construction, 1902.

The Flatiron Building was designed by Chicago’s Daniel Burnham as a vertical Renaissance palazzo with Beaux-Arts styling. Unlike New York’s early skyscrapers, which took the form of towers arising from a lower, blockier mass, such as the contemporary Singer Building (1902–1908), the Flatiron Building epitomizes the Chicago school conception:like a classical Greek column, its facade – limestone at the bottom changing to glazed terra-cotta from the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company in Tottenville, Staten Island as the floors rise– is divided into a base, shaft and capital.

13.Golden Gate Bridge under construction, San Francisco, between 1935 and 1937.

Before the bridge was built, the only practical short route between San Francisco and what is now Marin County was by boat across a section of San Francisco Bay. Ferry service began as early as 1820, with regularly scheduled service beginning in the 1840s for purposes of transporting water to San Francisco.

The Sausalito Land and Ferry Company service, launched in 1867, eventually became the Golden Gate Ferry Company, a Southern Pacific Railroad subsidiary, the largest ferry operation in the world by the late 1920s.Once for railroad passengers and customers only, Southern Pacific’s automobile ferries became very profitable and important to the regional economy.The ferry crossing between the Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco and Sausalito in Marin County took approximately 20 minutes and cost US$1.00 per vehicle, a price later reduced to compete with the new bridge. The trip from the San Francisco Ferry Building  took 27 minutes.

14.Hollywood Sign under construction, 1923.

The sign was first erected in 1923 and originally read “HOLLYWOODLAND”. Its purpose was to advertise the name of a new housing development in the hills above the Hollywood district of Los Angeles. H.J. Whitley had already used a sign to advertise his development Whitley Heights, which was located between Highland Avenue and Vine Avenue. He suggested to his friend Harry Chandler, the owner of the Los Angeles Times newspaper, that the land syndicate in which he was involved make a similar sign to advertise their land.

15.Los Angeles City Hall under construction, 1927.

The building was designed by John Parkinson, John C. Austin, and Albert C. Martin, Sr., and was completed in 1928. Dedication ceremonies were held on April 26, 1928. It has 32 floors and, at 454 feet (138 m) high, is the tallest base-isolated structure in the world, having undergone aseismic retrofit from 1998 to 2001 so that the building will sustain minimal damage and remain functional after a magnitude 8.2 earthquake.

16.Penn Station under construction, New York City, 1908.

Pennsylvania Station is named for the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), its builder and original tenant, and shares its name with several stations in other cities. The current facility is the substantially remodeled underground remnant of a much grander station building designed by McKim, Mead, and White and completed in 1910. The original Pennsylvania Station was considered a masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts style but was demolished in 1963. The station was moved underground, and thePennsylvania Plaza complex, including the fourth and current Madison Square Garden, was completed in 1968.

17.Rockefeller Center under construction in New York, 1932.

The centerpiece of Rockefeller Center is the 70-floor, 872 ft (266 m)-tall building at 30 Rockefeller Center, centered behind the sunken plaza. It is alternatively known as the Comcast Building and 30 Rock (also the name of a comedy television show), and formerly known as the RCA Building and the GE Building. The building is the setting for the famous Lunchtime atop a Skyscraper photograph, taken by Charles C. Ebbets in 1932 of construction workers sitting on a steel beam without safety harnesses eating lunch above an 840-foot (260 m) drop to the ground.

The building was renamed in 1988, two years after General Electric (GE) re-acquired RCA, which it helped found in 1919. The famousRainbow Room club restaurant is located on the 65th floor; the Rockefeller family office occupies the 54th through 56th floors. Thes skyscraper is the headquarters of NBC and houses most of the network’s New York TV studios, including 6A, former home of Late Night with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O’Brien and The Dr. Oz Show; 6B, home of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and now home ofThe Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon; 8G, home of Late Night with Seth Meyers; 8H, home of Saturday Night Live; plus the operations of NBC News, MSNBC and network flagship station WNBC-TV. NBC currently owns the space it occupies in the building as a condominium arrangement. Rockefeller Center’s legacy as “Radio City” has its roots at 30 Rock. Until 1988, the building also housed the studio and operations of the company’s flagship radio station WNBC, which ceased broadcasting that year when its frequency was sold by NBC.

18.St Patrick’s Cathedral under construction, NYC, 1868.

The Diocese of New York, created in 1808, was made an archdiocese by Pope Pius IX on July 19, 1850. In 1853, Archbishop John Joseph Hughes announced his intention to erect a new cathedral to replace the Old Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in downtown Manhattan. The new cathedral was designed by James Renwick, Jr. in the Gothic Revival style. On August 15, 1858, the cornerstone was laid, just south of the diocese’s orphanage. At that time, present-day midtown Manhattan was far north of the populous areas of New York City.

Work was begun in 1858 but was halted during the Civil War and resumed in 1865. The cathedral was completed in 1878 and dedicated on May 25, 1879, its huge proportions dominating the midtown of that time. The archbishop’s house and rectory were added from 1882 to 1884, and an adjacent school (no longer in existence) opened in 1882.The spires were added in 1888, and an addition on the east, including a Lady chapel, designed by Charles T. Mathews, was begun in 1900. The Lady Chapel’sstained-glass windows were made between 1912 and 1930 by English stained glass artist and designer Paul Vincent Woodroffe. In 1927 and 1931, the cathedral was renovated, which included enlarging the sanctuary and installing the great organ.The cathedral and associated buildings were declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976.





19.The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge under construction, 1935.

Construction began on July 9, 1933. The western span of the bridge between San Francisco and Yerba Buena Island presented an enormous engineering situation. The bay was up to 100 feet (30 m) deep in places and the soil required new foundation-laying techniques. A single main suspension span some 4,100 feet (1.2 km) in length was considered but rejected, as it would have required too much fill and reduced wharfage space at San Francisco, had less vertical clearance for shipping, and cost more than the design ultimately adopted.The solution was to construct a massive concrete anchorage halfway between San Francisco and the island and to build the main suspension span on each side of this central anchorage.

20.The Tribune Tower under construction, Michigan Ave, Chicago, 1924.

By 1922, the neo-Gothic skyscraper had become an established design tactic, with the first important so-called “American Perpendicular Style” at Cass Gilbert‘s Woolworth Building of 1913. This was a late example, perhaps the last important example, and criticized for its perceived historicism. Construction on the Tribune Tower was completed in 1925 and reached a height of 462 feet (141 m) above ground. The ornate buttresses surrounding the peak of the tower are especially visible when the tower is lit at night.

21.The U.S. Capitol building under construction, 1860.

L’Enfant secured the lease of quarries at Wigginton Island and along Aquia Creek in Virginia for use in the foundations and outer walls of the Capitol in November 1791. Surveying was under way soon after the Jefferson conference plan for the Capitol was accepted.On September 18, 1793, first President George Washington, along with eight other Freemasons dressed in masonic regalia, laid the cornerstone, which was made by silversmith Caleb Bentley.

22.Times Building under construction, Times Square, New York, 1904.

The original newspaper headquarters in 1851 were at 113 Nassau Street, in a little building that stood until fairly recently, then up the street a few years later at 138 Nassau Street. In 1858, the Times then moved to a five-story edifice at 41 Park Row; thirty years later, partially in response to a new tower erected by the competing Tribune, it commissioned a new 13-story building at the same site, one that remains in use by Pace University. In 1904, again partially in response to the Herald Square headquarters of another competitor, the paper moved to perhaps its most famous location, the Times Tower, altering the name of the surrounding area fromLongacre Square to Times Square. The slender tower was so constricted in space that the paper outgrew it within a decade and, in 1913, moved into the Times Annex, 229 West 43rd Street, where it remained for almost a century

23.United Nations Secretariat Building under construction, Manhattan, New York City, November 1949.

The main building for the United Nations is in New York City in the United States of America, but the U.N. also has important offices in Geneva (Switzerland), Nairobi (Kenya) and Vienna (Austria).

24.World Trade Center Towers in construction, February 1970.

On September 20, 1962, the Port Authority announced the selection of Minoru Yamasaki as lead architect and Emery Roth & Sons as associate architects. Yamasaki devised the plan to incorporate twin towers; Yamasaki’s original plan called for the towers to be 80 stories tall, but to meet the Port Authority’s requirement for 10,000,000 square feet (930,000 m2) of office space, the buildings would each have to be 110 stories tall.