Irish Media Nation

Iconic photo shot 80 years ago today still intrigues (VIDEO)

Eighty years ago today, an intrepid photographer created the iconic image of eleven ironworkers, casually dangling their feet hundreds of feet above 5th Avenue while breaking for lunch on an exposed steel beam they had likely riveted into the framework of the rising 30 Rockefeller Center. Many, if not most, of these rugged individuals were almost certainly Irish Americans.

And despite the fact that the builders anticipated one laborer's death for every ten floors constructed, the men on the beam were happy to be high in the sky when about a third of their fellow citizens down below were out of work in Depression-era New York.

Irish Filmmaker Seán Ó Cualáin is among the many who have fallen under this picture's spell, investing much of his past five years exploring it in a nearly finished documentary. Last night at the Irish Consulate in New York, he screened a 75-minute version of "Men at Lunch," a beautifully crafted, meticulously researched, highly evocative work imbued with atmosphere and mystery.

Irish isle's designs on Venetian isles

Regular as the tides, another cultural acqua alta is washing over Venice now in the form of the Biennale Architetttura 2012. The theme this time is "Common Ground" and joining the many international firms exploring that theme in this cosmopolitan design petri dish are four from Ireland.

The country's official representative is the Dublin-based heneghan peng (no caps--it's a design thing), a firm already on global design map with such projects as bridge at the London Olympics, Giants Causeway Visitor Center in County Antrim, Northern Ireland and new museum at the Pyramids in Egypt.

"Shifting Ground" photos by Marie Louise Halpenny

EXTRA! EXTRA! Ten-year-old Barney Flaherty was the first newspaper boy in New York in 1833