High Steel_ The Daring Men Who Built The World's Greatest Skyline Part 12

In all the many speeches made that morning, no one mentioned the astonis.h.i.+ng decline of AOL Time Warner's stock over the last year. Attendees politely skipped over the fact that the company had lost about half its value since AOL and Time Warner merged the previous winter, and that the merger, barely a year old, was already looking like a colossal debacle. (The company would eventually concede as much, deleting AOL's acronym from its name, and from the building once intended to bear it.) A couple of months after the topping-out party, The New Yorker The New Yorker would capture the change that had occurred in the country's economic mood on the cover of its annual "Money Issue." Two years earlier, at the height of the Wall Street boom, the cover of the Money Issue had featured an ill.u.s.tration of a money tree, and three men standing under it gathering dollars by the bushel. Getting rich quick with minimal effort-that pretty much captured the mood of the country then. Now the cover showed a very different image: a pair of brawny ironworkers hanging off the edge of a steel skysc.r.a.per, one man riding a derrick hook, the other perched on a cantilevered beam, applying a rivet gun to the steel. The image was a surprising choice for the cover of an issue devoted to finance, but of course that was the point: it celebrated the old-fas.h.i.+oned virtue of hard physical work performed for a daily wage; of constructing something solid and real-a steel building-rather than a house of cards. The editors of the magazine seemed to be acknowledging that, as much as the meaning of work had changed over the previous century, there remained a raw physical element in the work of some people, an element, even, of daring and courage, and that these long-neglected virtues were as valuable now as ever. would capture the change that had occurred in the country's economic mood on the cover of its annual "Money Issue." Two years earlier, at the height of the Wall Street boom, the cover of the Money Issue had featured an ill.u.s.tration of a money tree, and three men standing under it gathering dollars by the bushel. Getting rich quick with minimal effort-that pretty much captured the mood of the country then. Now the cover showed a very different image: a pair of brawny ironworkers hanging off the edge of a steel skysc.r.a.per, one man riding a derrick hook, the other perched on a cantilevered beam, applying a rivet gun to the steel. The image was a surprising choice for the cover of an issue devoted to finance, but of course that was the point: it celebrated the old-fas.h.i.+oned virtue of hard physical work performed for a daily wage; of constructing something solid and real-a steel building-rather than a house of cards. The editors of the magazine seemed to be acknowledging that, as much as the meaning of work had changed over the previous century, there remained a raw physical element in the work of some people, an element, even, of daring and courage, and that these long-neglected virtues were as valuable now as ever.

Mickey Tracy still recalled the topping-out party two years earlier at the Conde Nast Building on Times Square, where The New Yorker The New Yorker now published. He remembered how the beautiful magazine people applauded the completion of a building the ironworkers had built, enjoying a ceremony the ironworkers had invented, while the ironworkers themselves were cordoned off, segregated under the watchful eyes of security guards, almost as if they presented a physical threat to the glossy crowd. "We got fed up," said Mickey. "Who needs that? So we left." The party at Time Warner was a far more inclusive affair, another reflection, perhaps, of the ironworkers' enhanced status after 9/11. Ironworkers were free to mingle as they pleased. now published. He remembered how the beautiful magazine people applauded the completion of a building the ironworkers had built, enjoying a ceremony the ironworkers had invented, while the ironworkers themselves were cordoned off, segregated under the watchful eyes of security guards, almost as if they presented a physical threat to the glossy crowd. "We got fed up," said Mickey. "Who needs that? So we left." The party at Time Warner was a far more inclusive affair, another reflection, perhaps, of the ironworkers' enhanced status after 9/11. Ironworkers were free to mingle as they pleased.

As the men celebrated at Columbus Circle that morning, Brett Conklin sat in his house in Suffern, surfing the doldrums of daytime television and waiting to get better. Almost exactly a year had pa.s.sed since his fall from the Ernst & Young building on Times Square. Brett was still out of work, still in pain, and still fighting depression brought on by idleness and limited options. Squeezing by on $400 a week in workers' compensation, he had too little money and too much time. It had devastated him to watch his fellow ironworkers, many of them friends, working at Ground Zero after 9/11 and to be unable to contribute himself. "That sucked," he said. "To be honest, everything sucks. The biggest thing now is coping with it. It changed the rest of my life-the rest of my life is changed. I don't know how to look at it anymore."

He was due to go in for surgery in March to repair his foot. He would have to learn to walk all over again but at the least the pain in his ankle would diminish-that was the hope, anyway. He'd already had one surgery, but it hadn't relieved the pain. The new surgery meant he would certainly never work on steel again. The nerves would be severed, the bones fused so his foot would have no lateral give to it anymore. He would lie in bed for two weeks with his foot elevated, then wear a cast for twelve weeks. It would take three to five years for him to learn to walk properly again. After his foot was repaired, he would probably go in for another surgery to repair the crushed vertebrae in his back.

Brett looked forward to enjoying a normal life someday, to getting married and starting a family. "I just gotta get through this first. My girlfriend's pressuring me now. She's like, 'Come on, come on, let's get engaged,' and I'm like, 'I can't afford to buy you a wedding ring-I can't afford nothin' nothin' right now.'" He planned to start school again in the fall and complete his credits toward a college degree. "I might go into some kind of computer business. I don't know yet. Maybe marketing, something like that. I don't know if I'm a sit-behind-the-desk type of guy. I really don't know yet." For all the grief ironwork had brought him, he missed it terribly. "It was the best. There was nothing better." right now.'" He planned to start school again in the fall and complete his credits toward a college degree. "I might go into some kind of computer business. I don't know yet. Maybe marketing, something like that. I don't know if I'm a sit-behind-the-desk type of guy. I really don't know yet." For all the grief ironwork had brought him, he missed it terribly. "It was the best. There was nothing better."

Earlier that winter, an all-steel skysc.r.a.per had started to rise on Times Square, directly across Seventh Avenue from the now completed Ernst & Young building, where Brett had fallen a year earlier. This new building was going to closely mimic the Ernst & Young building, not only in appearance but also in use. It was to be corporate headquarters for Arthur Andersen, the other other major accounting firm in New York. (A few months later Arthur Andersen, derailed by its involvement in the Enron scandal, would drop out as anchor tenant of the building.) major accounting firm in New York. (A few months later Arthur Andersen, derailed by its involvement in the Enron scandal, would drop out as anchor tenant of the building.) The new skysc.r.a.per had gotten off to a good start, and by early spring the raising gangs had climbed their way out of the hole and up to the fifth floor. As the building rose, the men in the raising gang on the south side could not help noticing the young women working in the offices across 41st Street. The women were employees of Liz Claiborne, the apparel company. Sealed behind plate gla.s.s, they were fetching, fas.h.i.+onable, and perfectly unattainable.

When poets court women, they use a pen and parchment; when ironworkers court women, they make do with a can of spray paint and a rusty beam. "GOOD MORNING, GIRLS. YOU LOOK GREAT," one of the men wrote in orange paint on the web of a beam. Then, a few days later: "HI, PRETTY LADY." The young women across the street pretended to be oblivious to the ironworkers' missives but the ironworkers were used to that.

One of the men working in the raising gang on the southern side of the building was Jeff Martin. That was his real name, though few of the men working alongside him knew it. Everybody called him by his nickname, J. Kid. He was in his early 40s and still unmarried, a man's man. His two great loves were riding motorcycles and hunting. He'd been to Ground Zero in the early days after the attack and had worked hard alongside the other ironworkers. He was one of those rare men everybody liked.

J. Kid fell from a column on the southern edge of the building early on a Wednesday morning in May. He was coming down off the top of the column, having gone up to remove a hoisting hitch. He wasn't doing anything daring or careless. On the contrary, he'd gone out of his way to take precautions, climbing a ladder rather than scaling the column or jumping a ride on the crane hook, as he might have done in the old days. The accident occurred when he was trying to set his feet back down on the top rung of the ladder. Somehow the ladder kicked out from under him, and he lost it and fell. He glanced off the edge of the floor, then slipped out under the safety wires and dropped more than 50 feet to the street corner below.

Over the next few days, his fellow ironworkers put together a makes.h.i.+ft memorial at the corner of 41st and Seventh, where J. Kid died. Somebody nailed together a wooden cross. Scattered around the base of the cross were mementos of J. Kid's life: a set of deer antlers, a cap, a pocketknife. A turquoise bracelet. A bouquet of flowers lay there on the ground as well. They had been sent over by the women across the street.

"GIRLS AT LIZ C.," somebody wrote on a south-facing beam a few days later, "THANKS FOR YOUR KINDNESS."

J. Kid was the first of several construction fatalities on New York skysc.r.a.pers that year. A few weeks after his death, a young Newfoundlander was fatally injured while jumping a kangaroo crane in Brooklyn. Two elevator workers would plunge to their deaths on Madison Avenue. Another young man, working as a surveyor for a steel erection company, would also die before the year was out.

It was an odd coincidence that 2002, the first year of OSHA's Subpart R (which had gone into effect in January), would turn out to be the most lethal year in recent memory for high-steel construction workers in New York. You couldn't blame OSHA, though. There were always a lot of accidents when a construction boom was on. Accidents happened. There was only so much that OSHA could do about it.

"n.o.body wants their kid to do this," said Joe Gaffney, the man whose mother had watched him through binoculars when he worked at Ernst & Young-and whose father had briefly interrupted his career of crime to work on the World Trade Center. Joe loved ironwork but he appreciated its risks keenly. "You need to have a little fear. A little fear's a good thing or you stop being careful. If you're not aware of what you're doing, you're gonna wind up in the hole. You don't get a second chance."

In September of 2002, a few days before the anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, Joe Gaffney would fall from the 22nd to the 20th floor of a skysc.r.a.per on Madison Avenue-the same building where the elevator workers had died a couple of weeks earlier. He would fracture his spine and spend a few days in the hospital in critical condition. His was one of those accidents that some men fear more than death, the sort of accident that puts a man in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. But Joe was lucky. His spine was fractured but not broken. He would heal. He got a second chance after all.

G.o.d KNOWS.

Jerry Soberanes sat on a concrete stoop next door to the Coliseum. The day was warm and sunny, and the Coliseum was filled with ironworkers slaking their thirst. Jerry preferred to be out here, alone on the stoop, eating a salad. "It's too crowded in there now," he said. "I liked it better when it was just the raising gang."

Fifteen months had pa.s.sed since Jerry and Matt and Bunny and John and Chett showed up and looked into the enormous hole. Across the street, the south tower rose 24 stories over Columbus Circle. The lower floors were clad in gla.s.s facade, the upper floors still bare. The ironworkers had set 28,000 tons of steel. Jerry, as one of eight connectors, had personally set about 3,500 tons of it, give or take a few. Another year from now, Jerry and Matt would return to top out the building with a steel crown at 700 feet. For now, though, their work was nearly done.

No one died. No one got badly hurt. There was that to be thankful for. On the other hand, the job hadn't been much fun, either. Nothing like the great sport the raising gangs had antic.i.p.ated coming in. The steel had sputtered in for so many months, and even when there was finally steel, getting it up in the air had been a painstaking process. The compet.i.tion was a dud. "We blew everybody out of the water," Kevin Scally bragged once, but he didn't say it with any conviction. The truth, as Kevin admitted, was that the gangs could not compare themselves. For one thing, they worked too far apart from each other to keep track of each other's progress. And there were other complicating factors. Matt and Jerry's gang, for instance, had done a lot of heavy lifting for Johnny and Punchy's since their tower crane happened to have a greater lifting capacity. Time spent lifting another gang's steel was time spent not setting your own.

The job put a sour taste in the men's mouths for reasons that had nothing to do with sport or compet.i.tion. For most of them, the Time Warner Center marked their first experience of the new world of ironwork: the rules, the oversight, the abridgements of autonomy. The lesson the ironworkers learned at Time Warner was that their work would be (presumably) safer, but that it would also be more regimented and considerably duller. Even Matt, who had been so zealous about connecting a year ago, had lost some of his enthusiasm for this job. "It's become drudgery," he admitted one day in early May. At least, now, the end of the drudgery was in sight. By the end of May, it was done.

Jack Doyle returned once more to the site of the World Trade Center at the end of May. He arrived on the evening of May 28 to witness the removal of the last piece of the steel from the hole. The mayor was there, alongside a bugler and a brigade of bagpipers. The event was the opposite of a topping-out ceremony: they were here to pull out a piece of steel, not set one. They came to mourn, not celebrate.

Jack came in his official capacity, as president of Local 40. But he also came as the young man from Conception Bay who'd showed up here long ago determined to make it to the top. As he walked down the ramp into the deep hole, he was flooded with deja vu. He knew this hole. He'd been here before. "That was an eerie feeling for me," he said. "I never thought that I would look at those walls again. We filled it up with steel, they filled it up with concrete-they covered it over. We put buildings all around. And now here I am walking back into square one after thirty-odd years. Just the same as if nothing was ever there."

Much had changed since 1968, of course-in the world at large and in the world, more specifically, of ironworkers. Most of the young ironworkers gathered in the hole with Jack that evening had never caught a rivet or pushed the bullstick of a derrick; never taken a ride on the ball of the crane or even, some of them, experienced the keen thrill of walking a beam high above the ground with nothing to keep you there but your own guts and balance. And as the work had changed, so had the ironworkers. Jack could see the change reflected in the faces of the men, 13 percent now African-American, another 5 percent Hispanic. Even a couple women had joined Local 40; neither had been seen around the hall for a while, but others, surely, would come. Jack was not a sentimental man. You could welcome some changes and you could object to others, but there was not a d.a.m.n thing-short of standing in a hole in the ground under the spell of deja vu-that you could do to halt the future.

The last column stood under what had once been the south tower. It weighed 58 tons, one of the enormous pieces that Jack had grappled with 34 years earlier. As a crowd watched, an ironworker lit a torch and began to cut through the steel. Shortly before 8:30, under the glow of floodlights, a crane hooked the column and lifted it, laying it on the back of a flatbed waiting nearby. The workers shouted "U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" and "Union! Union! Union!" but n.o.body complained about jingoism or featherbedding, or any of the sins often laid on union tradesmen. The job had come in three months ahead of schedule and well under budget, an achievement that owed a lot to the hard work of hard hats. "The construction workers who have dedicated themselves to this effort are on the verge of completing an enormous job, and in many ways this is their night to reflect and remember," said Mayor Bloomberg. Afterward, as the ironworkers and other construction personnel filed up the ramp, saluted by firemen and police, the mayor shook their hands, one by one.

It was a moment of high praise for the ironworkers and other laborers who worked at Ground Zero, but it would not last. Gradually, maybe inevitably, the prediction that Kevin Scally had made a few days after 9/11-We'll be popular for a while, and then we're gonna disappear-came to pa.s.s. The new status of the ironworkers and other tradesmen subsided; the attention faded. The fact that the press and public seemed to forget their contribution so easily upset some of the men, but most took it in stride. "G.o.d knows what we did down there," said Mickey Tracy. "That's good enough for me."

Mike Emerson returned to his family. He and Danny Doyle, the foreman with whom he'd come down from Columbus Circle on September 12, went on to another job together, along with several other men they'd worked closely with at Ground Zero. They had spent as much time down there as anyone; unlike the firemen and policemen, who generally worked leapfrog s.h.i.+fts, three days on, three days off, the ironworkers worked straight s.h.i.+fts, seven days on, no days off. It said something about the mentality of ironworkers that a year after 9/11, while 500 firemen were claiming disability due to smoke inhalation and psychological trauma, not a single ironworker had made such a claim. "We could try," said Mike. "It's just, I don't think anyone would listen to us."

Joe Lewis shuttled back and forth between the row house in Brooklyn and his home in Conception Harbour that summer. He talked often about getting back to work, but the doctors' prognosis of the nerve damage in his arm was not encouraging, so he made the best of it, spending as much time in Newfoundland as he could between the obligatory appointments with doctors and lawyers. He continued to play music whenever the opportunity arose, and what he could not play, he sang.

Newfoundland turned out to be not quite as distant from the event of September 11 as one might have supposed. Hundreds of overseas flights had been grounded there when American airs.p.a.ce closed in the wake of the terrorist attack. Newfoundlanders took in the stranded pa.s.sengers and fed them for several days, showering the wayfarers with hospitality. On his last trip to Newfoundland, Joe noticed that the ferry to Argentia was packed with foreigners. People who had been stranded in Newfoundland were returning as tourists to revisit the place they'd fallen in love with. What cod could not provide-a decent economy-perhaps tourists could.

Keith McComber-Bunny Eyes-dropped out of ironwork for a time after leaving the Time Warner job. He pa.s.sed a few months at a rustic Mohawk hunting lodge in the woods a hundred miles north of Kahnawake, then returned to New York that winter. He became a foreman of his own raising gang, a natural step for a connector. He put on a little weight, also a natural step for a man who quits the action of connecting for the more sedentary life of pus.h.i.+ng. He seemed entirely content with where he'd landed.

Many of the men who had worked at Columbus Circle moved due east that summer to begin building an enormous skysc.r.a.per on 59th Street and Lexington Avenue. It was another Bovis job, and Joe Kennedy was superintendent. He brought over three of the raising gangs from Columbus Circle to work under the three cranes. This new building-it would become home to Bloomberg Media, the company founded by the city's billionaire mayor-shared a number of important features with Time Warner Center. It began as another huge hole, one of the biggest in the city, and combined a steel podium with reinforced concrete towers.

The safety measures that had been applied so vigorously at Columbus Circle turned out to be even stricter here, and the ironworkers balked. One afternoon, a connector stepped off a column onto the hook of the crane and swung out like Tarzan over the hole, then rode the hook down into it. It was an exhilarating sight, not because it looked like fun-though it did-but because it was about the most outrageously illicit thing an ironworker could do in 2002, and he did it in broad daylight in front of dozens of people. The task of reprimanding the connector fell to Keith Brown, who had recently come over to Lexington Avenue to serve (with Marvin Davis, of course) as walking boss. It gave Keith no pleasure to tell the connector that if he ever rode a hook again he'd be fired on the spot.

As it happened, cattycorner to the Bloomberg Media building, on the ground floor of an old red brick walk-up at Third Avenue and 59th Street, was a bright and expensive sandwich shop. The floors were slate, the walls lime green, the patrons well dressed in white-collar garb. The ironworkers never went there for lunch, preferring the plainer, more affordable deli on the other side of the building, but a hundred years earlier the place had crawled with ironworkers. It was Lynch's saloon, Sam Parks' old haunt-the very spot where Parks and his underlings drank and plotted and "entertained" their rivals. No sign of that sawdust saloon remained in the overpriced sandwich shop. Too much had changed. Sam Parks was dead, vanished, removed one spring morning early in the last century to parts unknown. But he was not gone entirely. A wisp of his reckless, sc.r.a.ppy spirit had been released into the atmosphere by the smoke of the burning towers. It was visible down there in the hole with Jack Doyle in the smoke of the torch cutting the final column, and now, through the windows of this sandwich shop on 59th Street, in the smoke of Matt's cigarette as he walked a beam 80 feet over Third Avenue, and in the clouds rus.h.i.+ng across the blue sky as a chunk of steel floated under them, into the outstretched hands of Kevin Scally and Joe Emerson.

Whatever rose downtown could not be what was there before. The Great American Steel Skysc.r.a.per had been forever demoted from an icon of strength to a symbol of vulnerability. But it could stand for an idea every bit as compelling as what the old towers stood for: Defiance Defiance. It would take a certain amount of defiance to plan and inhabit a skysc.r.a.per on the site where two had been turned to rubble, and it would take defiance to build it. How much structural steel it would take-well, that remained to be seen. With any justice, the answer would be many thousands of tons, all of it hoisted and bolted in the sky by ironworkers. They would shove it, prod it, whack it, ream it, kick it, shove it some more, swear at it, straddle it, pound it mercilessly, and then rivet it or weld it or bolt it up and go home. On a good day.SOURCES.

CHAPTER 1: SOME LUCK.

Brett's fall: New York Times: February 25, 2001; "Iron in the Blood, Misfortune on the Mind."

Ironworker injuries: "Insurance: Workers' Comp Rates Ready to Take Off." ENR. ENR. August 30, 2002. August 30, 2002.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Worker Deaths By Falls: A Summary of Surveillance Findings and Investigative Case Reports. Worker Deaths By Falls: A Summary of Surveillance Findings and Investigative Case Reports. September 2000. September 2000.

U.S. Department of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Compensation and Working Conditions Compensation and Working Conditions. Spring 2000.

U.S. Department of Labor. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Federal Register/Vol. 63, No. 156. Federal Register/Vol. 63, No. 156. August 13, 1998. August 13, 1998.

U.S. Department of Labor. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Federal Register/Vol. 66, No. 12. Federal Register/Vol. 66, No. 12. January 18, 2001. January 18, 2001.

Men who fell: Norris, Margaret. Heroes and Hazards. Heroes and Hazards. 1932. 1932.

Thomas, Lowell. Men of Danger Men of Danger. 1936.

New York Times: July 16, 1903; "Workmen Fall..."

September 10, 1903; "Fell From Bridge; Lives."

Childe, Cromwell. "The Structural Iron Workers." Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly. July 1901.

CHAPTER 2: THE MAN ON TOP (1901).

Early history of skysc.r.a.pers: "The Attractiveness of M. Eiffel's Proposed Tower." Scientific American. Scientific American. August 21, 1886. August 21, 1886.

Birkmire, William H. The Planning and Construction of High Office Buildings The Planning and Construction of High Office Buildings. 1898.

Bossom, Alfred C. Building to the Skies: The Romance of the Skysc.r.a.per Building to the Skies: The Romance of the Skysc.r.a.per. 1934.

Brochure Advertising Retail s.p.a.ce (re: Flatiron). 1902. (re: Flatiron). 1902.

Burrows, Edwin G. and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. 1999. 1999.

Douglas, George H. Skysc.r.a.pers: A Social History of the Very Tall Building in America. Skysc.r.a.pers: A Social History of the Very Tall Building in America. 1996. 1996.

Freitag, Joseph Kendall. Architectural Engineering: With Especial Reference to High Building Construction, Including Many Examples of Prominent Office Buildings Architectural Engineering: With Especial Reference to High Building Construction, Including Many Examples of Prominent Office Buildings. 1906.

Horowitz, Louis J. and Boyden Sparks. Towers of New York Towers of New York. 1937.

James, Henry. The American Scene The American Scene. 1907.

Landau, Sarah Bradford and Carl W. Condit. Rise of the New York Skysc.r.a.per, 18651913 Rise of the New York Skysc.r.a.per, 18651913. 1996.

New York Times: July 14, 1895; "Limit of High Buildings."

September 27, 1896; "Fatalities to Workmen."

Saliga, Pauline A. The Sky's the Limit: A Century of Chicago Skysc.r.a.pers. The Sky's the Limit: A Century of Chicago Skysc.r.a.pers. 1990. 1990.

Shultz, Earle and Walter Simmons. Offices in the Sky Offices in the Sky. 1959.

Starrett, Paul. Changing the Skyline: An Autobiography Changing the Skyline: An Autobiography. 1938.

Starrett, W. A. Skysc.r.a.pers and the Men Who Build Them Skysc.r.a.pers and the Men Who Build Them. 1928.

Union History Company. History of Architecture and the Building Trades of Greater New York History of Architecture and the Building Trades of Greater New York. 1899.

Early bridges: Cooper, Theodore. American Railroad Bridges American Railroad Bridges. 1898.

Curtis-Clarke, Thomas. An Account of the Iron Railway Bridge Across the Mississippi River at Quincy, Illinois An Account of the Iron Railway Bridge Across the Mississippi River at Quincy, Illinois. 1869.

Curtis-Clarke, Thomas. "European and American Bridge Building Practice." The Engineering Magazine The Engineering Magazine. 1901.

Detroit Bridge & Iron Works. Memoir of the Iron Bridge Over the Missouri River, at St. Joseph, MO, Built in 1871-2-3 Memoir of the Iron Bridge Over the Missouri River, at St. Joseph, MO, Built in 1871-2-3.

Kemp, Emory L. "The Fabric of Historic Bridges." The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology. The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology. 1989. 1989.

MacQueen, P. "Bridges and Bridge Builders." Cosmopolitan, A Monthly Ill.u.s.trated Magazine. Cosmopolitan, A Monthly Ill.u.s.trated Magazine. Vol. 13, 1892. Vol. 13, 1892.

McCullough, David. The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge. The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge. 1972. 1972.

Pa.s.sfield, Robert W. "The Turcot Riveted Arch-Truss Bridge." The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology. 1997.

Vose, George L. "Safety in Railroad Travel." The North American Review. The North American Review. October 1882. October 1882.

Early ironworkers: The Bridgemen's Magazine. 19011903 (all issues). 19011903 (all issues).

Childe, Cromwell. "The Structural Workers." Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly. Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly. July 1901. July 1901.

Grant, Luke (for the United States Commission on Industrial Relations). The National Erectors' a.s.sociation and The International a.s.sociation of Bridge and Structural Ironworkers. The National Erectors' a.s.sociation and The International a.s.sociation of Bridge and Structural Ironworkers. 1915. 1915.

Moffett, Cleveland. Careers of Danger and Daring Careers of Danger and Daring. 1913.

Poole, Ernest. "Cowboys of the Skies." Everybody's Magazine. Everybody's Magazine. November 1908. November 1908.

CHAPTER 3: THE NEW WORLD.

Drinking: Sonnenstuhl, William J. Working Sober: The Transformation of an Occupational Drinking Culture Working Sober: The Transformation of an Occupational Drinking Culture. 1996.

Workforce statistics: s.h.i.+fflett, Crandall. Almanac of American Life: Victorian America 18761913 Almanac of American Life: Victorian America 18761913. 1996.

Caplow, Hicks, and Wattenberg. The First Measured Century: An Ill.u.s.trated Guide to Trends in America, 19002000 The First Measured Century: An Ill.u.s.trated Guide to Trends in America, 19002000. 2000.

Definition of skysc.r.a.per: Tallmadge, Thomas E. (ed.). The Origin of the Skysc.r.a.per: Report of the Committee Appointed by the Trustees of the Estate of Marshal Field for the Examination of the Structure of the Home Insurance Building The Origin of the Skysc.r.a.per: Report of the Committee Appointed by the Trustees of the Estate of Marshal Field for the Examination of the Structure of the Home Insurance Building. 1939.

CHAPTER 4: THE WALKING DELEGATE (1903).

Sam Parks [The narrative of Parks' rise and fall is mainly drawn from approximately 100 newspaper articles published between April 1903 and May 1904]: [The narrative of Parks' rise and fall is mainly drawn from approximately 100 newspaper articles published between April 1903 and May 1904]: Commercial Advertiser New York Daily News New-York Daily Tribune New York Herald New York Post New York Press New York Times The Sun More Sam Parks: Baker, Ray Stannard. "The Trust's New Tool-The Labor Boss." McClure's Magazine. McClure's Magazine. November 1903. November 1903.

The Bridgemen's Magazine. 19011904 (all issues). 19011904 (all issues).

Clarkin, Franklin. "The Daily Walk of the Walking Delegate." The Century Ill.u.s.trated Monthly Magazine The Century Ill.u.s.trated Monthly Magazine. December 1903.

International a.s.sociation of Bridge, Structural and Ornamental Iron Workers. A History of the Iron Workers Union. A History of the Iron Workers Union. 1996. 1996.

Lardner, James and Thomas Reppetto. NYPD: A City and Its Police NYPD: A City and Its Police. 2000.

Lewis, Henry Harrison. "Sam Parks: Grafter and Blackmailer." Harper's Weekly Harper's Weekly. October 17, 1903.

Scott, Leroy. The Walking Delegate The Walking Delegate. 1905.

Starrett, W.A. Skysc.r.a.pers and the Men who Build Them Skysc.r.a.pers and the Men who Build Them. 1928.

CHAPTER 5: MONDAYS (2001).

Ironwork: Cherry, Mike. On High Steel: The Education of an Ironworker. On High Steel: The Education of an Ironworker. 1974. 1974.

s.p.a.cing out: Moffett, Cleveland. Careers of Danger and Daring Careers of Danger and Daring. 1913.

New York Times: September 29, 1900; "Fell 85 Feet..."

Thomas, Lowell. Men of Danger Men of Danger. 1936.

CHAPTER 6: KAHNAWAKE.

Early history of Kahnawake Mohawks: Blanchard, David S. Kahnawake: A Historical Sketch Kahnawake: A Historical Sketch. 1980.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume III. 1908.

Snow, Dean R. The Iroquois The Iroquois. 1994.