The construction workers embossed in bronze on a 1929 Art Deco skyscraper’s elevators

There’s a lot to admire about the Fuller Building, the Art Deco masterpiece completed in 1929 on Madison Avenue and 57th Street.

Sleek, streamlined, and stylish, this bold new design heralded the skyscraper age of the 20th century.

It also transformed 57th Street into an east-west business and cultural artery, with the Fuller building as one of its premier towers.

But what I want to call out is the humanity of the Fuller Building—namely the respect the tower gives to the men who built it.

Each elevator door in the gleaming lobby features bas reliefs of overall-clad construction workers hoisting the blocks of granite that form the building’s base, hammering beams, securing steel, and plastering walls.

Few faces are shown. It’s more of a way to honor the tradesmen who put the plans of dreams of developers and architects into the cityscape, transforming the look of the skyline and the vantage point through which people saw the city.

The Fuller Building memorialized the workers who built it in another way: Elie Nadelman’s sculpture of two men in front of what looks like a skyline, flanking a clock (above).

I don’t know if Nadelman had a hand in the bronze reliefs on the elevators. But honoring these workers by putting them front and center in the lobby makes sense when you realize that the Fuller company was a construction company founded in Chicago by an architect, George Fuller.

Fuller and his company were behind some of New York’s first skyscrapers, including the Flatiron Building—originally called the Fuller Building when it opened in 1902.

It feels appropriate for Labor Day to post their images—the anonymous army of people who built and continue to build the city we live in.

[Fifth image: structurae.net]