You look up at the Empire State Building or the tangled steel of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and you think of names like Rockefeller, Moses, or LaGuardia. Big names. Big egos. But honestly, if you're asking who built New York City, the answer isn't found in a boardroom. It’s in the dirt. It’s in the lungs of Mohawk ironworkers who walked narrow beams 60 stories up without a harness. It’s in the Irish laborers who died in the trenches of the Croton Aqueduct.
New York didn't just happen. It was clawed out of the earth.
Most people think of the city as this inevitable progression of progress. Like it was destined to be the capital of the world. It wasn't. It was a swampy, rocky mess of an island that required a literal army of immigrants and specialized craftsmen to transform it into the vertical forest we see today.
The Mohawk Skywalkers and the High Steel
If you’ve ever seen those iconic black-and-white photos of guys eating lunch on a steel girder hundreds of feet in the air, you’re looking at the real answer to who built New York City. A massive chunk of that labor force came from the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory near Montreal.
It started back in the 1880s. The Dominion Bridge Company was building a bridge across the St. Lawrence River that cut right through Mohawk land. They hired locals as laborers. What they found was that these men had an incredible lack of fear regarding heights. Or, more accurately, a cultural stoicism and a physical grace that made them natural "skywalkers."
By the 1920s and 30s, Mohawk ironworkers were the backbone of the New York skyline. They built the Chrysler Building. They built the George Washington Bridge. They were the ones riveting the steel for the World Trade Center decades later. There was a specific neighborhood in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, nicknamed "Little Caughnawaga," where hundreds of Mohawk families lived for generations. They weren't just workers; they were a community that literally held the city’s skeleton together.
Imagine walking a six-inch wide beam. Wind whipping at 40 miles per hour. No safety net. That’s how the city went vertical.
The Irish, the Italians, and the "Muckers"
But before you could go up, you had to go down.
🔗 Read more: Why an Escape Room Stroudsburg PA Trip is the Best Way to Test Your Friendships
The bedrock of Manhattan is a nasty, hard metamorphic rock called Manhattan Schist. To build the subways, the water tunnels, and the foundations for those massive skyscrapers, you needed "muckers." This was grueling, miserable work.
In the mid-19th century, the Irish were the primary force. They dug the Croton Aqueduct, which finally brought fresh water to a city that was basically dying of cholera every few years. It was dangerous. In 1842, when the water finally flowed into the reservoir (where the New York Public Library stands now), people celebrated the "miracle" of engineering. They rarely mentioned the hundreds of Irish laborers who died from cave-ins and "blasting accidents."
Then came the Italians. By the late 1800s, Italian immigrants dominated the heavy masonry and excavation sectors. If you see a beautiful stone facade on a pre-war building in the West Village, a "scalpellino" (stonemason) from Italy likely carved it. They brought skills from the Old World that New York desperately needed to move past its wooden-shack origins.
The Human Cost of the Subway
The first subway line opened in 1904. It wasn't built by machines. It was built by 7,700 workers using picks, shovels, and dynamite.
- Over 50 men died during the initial construction.
- Hundreds more suffered from "the bends" or silicosis from breathing in rock dust.
- They moved 3.5 million cubic yards of earth.
Think about that next time you're complaining about a delayed 4 train.
Robert Moses: The Man Who Shaped the Map
We can't talk about who built New York City without talking about the "Master Builder" himself, Robert Moses. He’s a polarizing figure. Some people call him a visionary; others call him a villain who destroyed neighborhoods. Honestly? He was probably both.
Moses held power for over 40 years without ever being elected to a single office. He built:
💡 You might also like: Why San Luis Valley Colorado is the Weirdest, Most Beautiful Place You’ve Never Been
- The Triborough Bridge (now the RFK).
- The West Side Highway.
- Jones Beach.
- The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge.
- Over 600 playgrounds.
But his "construction" came at a cost. He favored cars over public transit. He purposely built low overpasses on the Long Island Parkways so that buses (which poor people and minorities used) couldn't reach his pristine beaches. He tore through the heart of the Bronx to build the Cross Bronx Expressway, displacing thousands of families and arguably triggering the urban decay of the 70s.
New York looks the way it does because Moses had a map and a bulldozer. He turned a city of neighborhoods into a city of highways.
The Women in the Drafting Rooms
History usually forgets the women, but they were there. Take Emily Roebling. When her husband, Washington Roebling, became bedridden with decompression sickness while building the Brooklyn Bridge, Emily took over.
She didn't just "help." For over a decade, she was the field engineer. She understood the mathematics of catenary curves. She dealt with the crooked politicians of Tammany Hall. She was the first person to cross the bridge when it opened in 1883. Without her, the Brooklyn Bridge would have likely ended up as a half-finished ruin in the East River.
Later, in the mid-20th century, architects like Natalie de Blois were the silent force behind the "International Style." She was a senior designer at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). She did the heavy lifting on the Pepsi-Cola Building and Union Carbide. In a room full of men in grey flannel suits, she was the one actually making the glass-and-steel aesthetic work.
The Modern Era: Who is Building New York Now?
The skyline is changing again. Look at "Billionaires' Row" on 57th Street or the massive development at Hudson Yards. Who is building these?
Today, it's a global effort. You have the "Sandhays"—the modern-day tunnelers—who are currently digging the Second Avenue Subway and the massive City Tunnel No. 3. These workers are highly specialized. They use TBMs (Tunnel Boring Machines) the size of football fields, but the risk remains.
📖 Related: Why Palacio da Anunciada is Lisbon's Most Underrated Luxury Escape
And then there's the immigrant labor of today. Construction sites across Queens and Brooklyn are staffed by workers from Ecuador, Mexico, Poland, and China. They are the new "muckers." According to the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH), non-union construction sites, which often employ undocumented workers, see a disproportionate number of accidents. The city is still being built on the backs of people looking for a foothold in America.
The Architecture of Power vs. The Architecture of Life
There’s a tension in New York's DNA.
On one hand, you have the "starchitects" like Bjarke Ingels or the late Zaha Hadid, whose buildings look like twisted ribbons or silver waves. On the other, you have the "Great Grid" of 1811. That grid was a cold, calculated business decision to maximize real estate value. It flattened hills and erased streams.
But the people who really build the city are the ones who inhabit it. The shopkeepers who turn a ground-floor unit into a bodega. The artists who turned derelict DUMBO lofts into a global brand. A city isn't just steel; it’s the layers of paint on a rent-controlled apartment wall.
Why It Matters
Understanding who built New York City changes how you walk down the street. It’s not just a collection of buildings. It’s a graveyard of labor and a monument to human ambition.
If you want to truly appreciate the craftsmanship, stop looking at the shiny new glass towers for a second. Go to a subway station like City Hall (the abandoned one if you can catch a tour) or look at the terra cotta details on the Woolworth Building. Notice the thumbprints in the mortar.
Actionable Steps for the Urban Explorer
If you're in New York and want to see the "bones" of the city, skip the Empire State Building observation deck once and try these instead:
- Visit the Skyscraper Museum in Battery Park City. They have incredible exhibits on the "Skywalkers" and the economic forces that dictated why buildings are shaped like wedding cakes (the 1916 Zoning Resolution).
- Walk the High Line. But don't just look at the plants. Look at the steel rivets. That was an elevated freight rail built to keep trains from killing people on 10th Avenue (which used to be called "Death Avenue").
- Take the "Sandhog" tour. While you can't go into the active water tunnels, the New York Transit Museum in Downtown Brooklyn is located in a 1936 subway station. It’s the best place to understand the sheer physical grit required to dig under the city.
- Look for "Bishop's Crook" lampposts. These are the old-school cast-iron posts from the early 1900s. They represent a time when the city's "furniture" was designed to be beautiful, not just functional.
- Read "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro. It’s a 1,200-page beast of a book, but if you want to understand why the Cross Bronx Expressway exists or why the subway is the way it is, this is the Bible of New York infrastructure.
New York is never finished. It’s a work in progress, constantly being torn down and rebuilt by people whose names we usually don't bother to learn. But their work is everywhere. You’re standing on it. You’re breathing it. You're living in it.