An escalator suspended 101 stories above Southern Manhattan. It’s one of the most famous pictures of the new World Trade Center, and the new WTC isn’t even finished yet. But the photo, which originally surfaced on Reddit, has a whole backstory to it too, with some cool behind-the-scenes details from Scott Lahmers, the “elevator man” who took the photo.
Lahmers told Flickr that he had taken his camera in that day to simply photograph the site, since they had expected weather to delay the instillation. Instead, the 38,000-pound escalators were hoisted up into the sky over a few hours. The pictured escalator is one of nine being installed by the company Lahmers works with (along with 74 elevators), and took about a half hour to get into the building once it was at the right elevation. You can check out Lahmers’ interview below (sorry about the autoplay), and more of his pictures over at Flickr.
[Flickr]