As buildings grew taller, the number of workers pouring into city centers grew and grew. Boston by 1927 had 825,000 people a day coming into its downtown—or more than the entire population of the city. Pittsburgh absorbed 355,000 workers every day; Los Angeles and San Francisco 500,000 each; Chicago and Philadelphia over 750,000 apiece; and New York, superlative in everything, took in a whopping daily load of 3 million.
