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The Empire Building, a 117-year-old building still standing in Downtown Atlanta, has a morbid past.
Building began in 1900, and the construction site soon proved to be a hazardous environment. Not only did the crew take no breaks for bad weather or the Sabbath – illegal back then – but one night, a worker fell 40 feet down an elevator shaft and fractured his skull. Another day on the site, a joke gone wrong between two cabinetmakers turned into a deadly shooting.
When construction finished in 1901, the 14-story office building was the tallest in Atlanta at the time.