Skyscraper Day, September Third

Harriet, in All the Broken Angels, shares memories of the construction of the Empire State Building, which brought hope to a struggling country in the 1930s.

It's Skyscraper Day, and I wanted to share some history of the Empire State Building construction as seen through the eyes of Harriet in my book, All the Broken Angels.

Although the book is historical fiction, I remember my grandmother working as a cleaning woman in a tall building in New York City during the Depression. She was from Czechoslovakia when she came to the USA and didn't speak a word of English. This was her first job. It hurts me to think of her on her hands and knees back then, trying to support a family alone after her husband died.

I wish I had the chance to thank my grandmother for all she did, for her courage and hard work. I think to some degree, I see myself in her. Her resilience, her ability to move forward despite the obstacles placed in her way. I took what she told me about her life back and turned it into a scene in the book. Here's a bit of a description, followed by an excerpt. In this scene, she's speaking with her daughter, Cate, who is the lead character in the book.

Harriet’s mother worked nights as a cleaning woman in a skyscraper in New York. She couldn’t afford a sitter, so Harriet and her sister, Rosie, came along — tucked into a closet with blankets while their mother cleaned. From high above the city, they watched the Empire State Building rise, steel by steel.

Excerpt:

I never told you this before, Cate but Mama didn’t have a babysitter most nights. She brought Rosie and me to the office with her.”

“You went to work with Grandma?”

“We were too young to be left at home by ourselves, but it turned out her supervisor was also a widow and came here from a village in Czechoslovakia near where Mama was born. As long as we behaved and nobody complained, she would let her keep blankets for us to sleep on in a supply closet.” Mom squeezed the pillow to her chest.“How I loved that beautiful skyscraper. Rosie and I would look out from the top floor after dark and see the city lights stretch out below as if we were in a palace overlooking some magical kingdom.”

“I bet the Empire State Building is beautiful from up there.”

“Not back then. It was just being built. I remember because Mama went in early sometimes to cover someone’s day shift. Rosie and I watched the construction workers for hours. The men were a thousand feet in the air and walked those beams like The Flying Wallendas. They went higher and higher until that building was the tallest in the world. It gave us hope during the Depression.”

“You were stuck in an office building all night? Didn’t you get bored?”

“Mama gave us a box of Crayolas, and we drew on the back of old typing paper she fished out of waste baskets. At eight o’clock, she’d put us to bed in the closet and keep working. When she woke us up, Rosie and I would race to the big windows to catch the sunrise. It was amazing. The clouds lit up in more colors than we had crayons.” Mom sniffled and dabbed fresh tears. “When Mama caught up, she would point outside and say, ‘See, God put on show just for you.’”