America - The Story of Us ~ Episode 7 - Cities (HQ 720p)

[ Music ]

>> [Background Music] 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 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 Bedloe'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 would be astronomical.

Money, New York does not have.

At least 6 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 it.

Joseph Pulitzer, tenacious newspaper
magnate, immigrant, a 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,

Pulitzer launches the biggest fund-raising
campaign ever seen in North America.

>> It would be an irrevocable disgrace to
New York City and the American 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 Pulitzer's papers every day.

>> Enclosed please find 25
cents, is my contribution to--

>> One dollar the content of our my
little savings bank which we treasure--

>> -- resolved to send you the
contents of the first jackpot,

you will find enclosed four dollars.

>> The money we saved to go to the circus with.

>> Donations flood in from all across the
country, rich and poor, East and West,

pennies and nickels, five's and
ten's 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 feet high the pedestal will
be the biggest concrete structure in the world.

Over 200 men work through a
grueling winter to complete it.

As the last of the cement dries, workers toss
in their own silver dollars for good luck.

[ Music ]

[Background Music] Next,
Liberty's enormous iron skeleton.

It's designed by Gustave Eiffel, who
will build famous Eiffel Tower in Paris.

The skeleton is 151 feet
tall and with the pedestal,

it's the height of a 30-story office block.

[ Music ]

[Background Music] Now, for the outer layer.

Wrapping around the skeleton are
60,000 pounds of hand-sculpted copper.

The sandal is 32 times bigger than a human
foot the equivalent of the size of 879 shoes.

It's all on the job training
often at 300 feet in the air.

It's as difficult as it is dangerous

[ Music ]

[Background 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 feet long.

A finger nail weighs three and a half pounds.

The scale of Liberty is unimaginable.

[ Music ]

[Background Music] After 6 months of
hazardous construction there are no fatalities,

the Liberties 17-feet face is
finally winched into position.

It's bigger than Lincoln's on Mount Rushmore.

It's said the sculptor Frederic Auguste
Bartholdi modeled the face on his own mother.

[ Music ]

[Background 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, the symbol of the alliance
and friendships 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 refuse of your teeming shore,
send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

[ Music ]

>> [Background Music] Over the next two decades,
more than 12 million immigrants pass 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 200--

and almost 50 years history 95
percent of the people were not here.

They are no roots, they all
came from someplace else.

So, to me, America represents
the best of the human sprit.

>> A guidebook 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 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 1880 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 megacities
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 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.

Its 1872, and Andrew Carnegie,

A 5 foot 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.

It's even used in designer jewelry.

But, 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.

[ Music ]

[Background Music] 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 Bessemer 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 free fall.

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, 3,000 degrees
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, airplanes, even space travel.

None of it can happen if
steel can't be mass-produced.

[ Noise ]

[ Music ]

[Background Music] It's a success.

[ Music]

[Background Music] Carnegie is the
first ever to mass-produce steel.

Prices plummet by over 80 percent.

Output rockets from a few thousand
tons in 1860 to 11 million by 1900.

>> So many American stories of
success are diligence, 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.

>> [Background Music] Pittsburgh
transforms from a sleepy town

to 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 York.

It's an era of obscene opulence.

New York is a playground for super
rich industrialists and financiers.

Widely extravagant, they smoke
cigars rolled in 100 dollar 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.

[ Noise ]

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 hand know just how dangerous it can be.

>> The thing I hate worse than poison is
to take a new man when we're near the top.

They all get used to it or get killed.

[ Noise ]

>> No hard hats, just a 280-foot drop.

A sudden gust of wind and it's all over.

[ Noise ]

They're up here 8 hours a day.

Meals when they can.

No bath room breaks

[ Noise ]

They're called "Roughnecks" European
immigrants and Mohawk Indians.

Many were sailors and bridge
workers so they're used to heights.

[ Noise ]

>> The guys 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-- physically challenging but
also thinking, you had to be a little crazy

>> [Background Music] The
stakes couldn't be higher.

It's a risk they're willing to take.

The pay is 4 dollars a day, twice
the going rate for manual labor.

Foreman William Starrett
sums up his dangerous job.

>> Building skyscrapers is the
nearest peacetime equivalent of war.

Even to the occasional grim reality
of an accident or a maimed 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 roughnecks 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.

>> [Background Music] In 1902, in New York,

this is what the future looks
like, the Flatiron 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 does.

[ Music ]

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 Flatiron's extreme
shape damage a nearby shop."

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 stop
mostly at five floors no more walking

up stairs 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 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 built 50 steel-frame buildings.

And in 20 years, it's population more
than doubles to almost 1.7 million.

American cities are exploding.

[ Music ]

[Background Music] 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 rife on the streets.

But these mavericks are about
to make a difference.

[ Noise ]

Gangsters, murders, 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 dollars.

In New York, a policeman finds a list on a
murdered gangster, his rate card, punches:

2 dollars, nose and jaw broke:
10 dollars, ear chewed off:

15 dollars, the big job: 100 bucks and up.

[ Noise ]

[ Music ]

[Background Music] Detective Bureau Chief Thomas
Byrnes, a man who follows his own set of rules.

[ Noise and Music ]

He's shrewd.

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.

[ Music ]

In 4 years, Byrnes claims
he's arrested 3300 criminals.

He solved the biggest heist of the 19th
century nearly a 3 million dollar Manhattan

bank robbery.

Reporters called him the greatest
crime buster in the history

of the New York City Police Force.

[ Music ]

>> [Background Music] His
very manner, the size of him,

his menacing shoulders and
arms, the bark of his voice.

>> Pickpockets, forgers whoever
cracked the 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.

Byrnes is tackling this problem head on
and bringing police work into a new age.

This is his rogues gallery mug
shots of 7,000 known lawbreakers.

Using photography to identify criminals
will change detective work forever

>> Annie Reilly, Alias Middle
Annie, deceitful servant.

>> The mug shots are distributed to
police departments around the country.

But these are more than just pictures.

Byrnes is also building psychological
profiles of criminals.

>> Rufus Minor, 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.

>> [Background Music] Even today,
mug shot still catch criminals.

12 million are taken every year nation wide.

That's more than the entire population of Ohio.

And it all began with the rogue's
gallery over 120 years ago.

[ Noise ]

>> Any 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,
there were windowless tenements.

Sometimes you had no internal plumbing just
provides in the basement, in the backyard

and the lower east side during these years

with the single most crowded
place in the entire world.

>> Jacob Riis, Danish immigrant,
crime reporter, photographer.

He gets leads for stories
from Chief Inspector Byrnes.

Now, he's about to expose the hell of tenements.

Jacob Riis knows what it's like to be poor.

15 years ago, he lost his
job in a stock market crash.

It's midnight, but Riis 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.

[ Music ]

[Background Music] This is one of the
first-ever photographs of slum life.

>> Go.

[ Noise ]

>> It shocks millions.

>> Ladies and gentlemen,
my name is Jacob A. Riis.

And this is how the other half
live and die in New York City.

>> Magazines refuse to print his work.

So, Riis 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.

>> In this block, nine dead were
carried out this year alone.

Five in baby coffins.

>> What he demonstrated was that
there is another reality that all

that prosperity didn't trickle
down all the way to the bottom

and there was some deplorable living conditions.

And this country was not just
forced to confront those conditions

but then was moved to begin to deal all of them.

>> Riis publishes his pictures in a
book called "How the Other Half Lives."

It will sell more than 28 million copies.

Within 2 decades, the worst of
New York's slums are torn down.

Tenements sell at auction
for as a little as a dollar.

Riis' 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 and
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 3 foot-high
piles of human and animal waste.

Into this world steps a man on a white horse.

Colonel George Waring, Civil War veteran,

legendary sewer engineer,
"Apostle of Cleanliness."

He's the Head of New York Sanitation Department

>> The city's stinks with the
emanations of putrefying 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 called his men "White
Ducks" but Waring means business.

Tons of garbage, normally dumped
into the river is recycled.

Ash becomes land fill on Rikers Island.

Organic waste boiled into oil and grease.

Waring is America's first "Eco-warrior."

His men clean 433 miles of street.

Death rates decline, water quality improves.

Waring save the lives of thousands.

[Background Music] The measure
spread across America.

Just 16 years after Colonel Waring, half

of all cities have waste
collection, and it's not just waste.

By 1907, every large city
in the nation has sewers.

By 1909, there are 42,040
miles 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.

Menlo 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, 24/7 in
one of the world's first R&D labs.

It will generate more than 1,000 patents.

America still lights the night 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.

[ Music ]

>> Edison locks himself in his
lab, doesn't sleep for days.

[ Noise ]

The stakes are high.

His backers have sunk 130,000 dollars into
his research, millions in today's money.

>> He claimed to have gone through 6,000
materials from the plant world alone

in his search for the perfect filament.

>> Toward the lamp, Jack.

[ Noise ]

[Background Music] Spruce, beard, fish line,
thread, teak, boxwood, celluloid, parchment.

[ Noise ]

>> Then something extraordinary happens.

[ Noise ]

>> Cardboard.

[ Noise and Music ]

>> [Background Music] 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 Edison 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 and 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.

[ Noise ]

[Background Music] And as electricity comes to
the cities more and more people arrive with it.

By 1900, nearly four million
women are working in US cities.

In just 40 years, that figure
has more than quadrupled.

Urban factories are pounding out 75
percent of all consumer products in the US.

Places like this, modern steel-frame buildings
equipped with all the latest technology,

Otis electric elevators, Bell
telephones, Singer sewing machines.

But packing so many people into tall
buildings is a disaster waiting to happen.

[ Noise ]

The United States is hurtling
into the modern age symbolized

by megacities rising up all
across the continent.

By 1909, Americans are spending nearly 23
Billion dollars a year on ready-made clothes.

This factory is producing 12,000
garments a week known as shirtwaists,

they're the latest fashion
for the working woman.

[ Noise ]

New York City, March 25, 1911, 4:45 p.m.
the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, 8th floor,

260 girls work here, most of them teenagers.

[ Noise ]

Someone, we don't know who tosses a match
or maybe a cigarette into the scrap bin.

[ Noise ]

Eva Harris, a seamstress, smells burning.

>> Fire. There's a fire, Mr. Bernstein.

>> Production manager Samuel Bernstein
grabs one of the three fire pails.

But the fire is already spreading.

[Background 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.

There's a fire hose but it's not working.

>> 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 is a fire.

>> Put me through to the 9th floor.

>> She drops the phone and runs to get help.

The message never reaches the 9th floor.

Samuel Bernstein races up the main stairs
to help the 160 workers trapped there.

But blocking the front door,
there's a barrel of motor oil.

[ Noise ]

On the 9th floor, flames are already
shooting through the walls and windows.

[ Noise & Music ]

[Background Music] The girls on 9th rush
to the fire escape, but it's locked.

Only 2 escape routes are left on the 9th
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 and
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.

[ Noise ]

The flames were coming toward
me and I was being left behind.

I felt the elevator was leaving
the 9th floor for the last time.

>> She's the last person to
get to the last elevator.

[ Noise ]

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 its 30 feet too short.

[ Music ]

[Background Music] 4:58 p.m., the girls
trapped on the 9th floor are out of options.

[ Noise ]

In desperation, they jump.

[ Noise ]

5.15 p.m., the entire blaze is
over in less than half an hour.

146 people die in the Triangle
Shirtwaist factory fire.

There's trial but the owners walk free.

It remains the deadliest workplace disaster in
New York City history until September 11, 2001.

But some good does come out of it.

>> This dramatic tragedy
sparks a wave of reform.

So, you begin to get new restrictions
and a new conversation about what to do

to prevent this kind of tragedy from happening.

But it did not stop of course
that tragedy itself.

[ Bell ringing ]

>> [Background Music] Unions force management

to take responsibility for
the lives of their workers.

The Life Safety Code now used in all 50
States is a direct result of this fire.

It's why doors now open outwards in public
buildings why automatic sprinkler systems

or multiple exits are now the law.

The US and the modern city grew up together
typically new, enormous and fast paced.

The megacity is one of America's
greatest inventions.

[ Music ]