"topping out" traditions of the high-steel ironworkers, The

Western Folklore, Fall 2001 by Robinson, John V

One would think the place to look for information about Ironworker' customs would be in the unions' official publication, The Ironworker, but except for an occasional article about topping out there is precious little of the trades' lore reflected in its pages. The earliest printed reference to topping out I could locate in The Ironworker is in the December 1954 edition. The article reported (with accompanying pictures) that the first steel column, with a flag attached, of the final tier of steel was raised to the top of the 41 story Prudential building as part of the traditional topping out ceremony (7).

Topping out with the first column of the final tier, rather than the final beam, must have been the custom for quite a while. It was still in practice twenty years later when Mike Cherry (Local 40, New York), the only other ironworker to write about the custom, describes his topping out experience in his book On High Steel. Cherry writes:

When the first column on the last jump is stood up-in other words, when one piece [of iron] reaches to the highest elevation of the building-an American flag is fastened to it. Company dignitaries strike poses at the foot of the column, while flunkies take pictures.... At three, or three-thirty ... everybody knocks off for a few hours of eating and drinking at company expense. Sometimes it's just beer and skittles in the basement; sometimes the banquet room of a nearby restaurant is rented ... some companies habitually throw better parties than others, and part of the conversation at any party concerns how it stacks up against others (Cherry 1974: 120).

The custom has changed since Cherry wrote about it in 1974. Today the topping out ceremony is observed when the final beam is placed at the highest elevation and not the "first column" of the final elevation as Cherry recounts.

Since columns are two stories high, celebrating the completion of a structure at the first column of the final tier is a bit premature since, sans the first column already set in place, there are still two full floors of iron to be hoisted and set into place before the buildings' frame is at its full height.

Another, more recent, example of topping out with the final beam is narrated by Karl Sabbagh in Skyscraper (1990) where he describes the topping out of the Worldwide Plaza building in New York City on May 20, 1988:

A large white-painted beam had been placed on stands in front of the south-side lobby, and two men were now fixing a basketball net to it .... At one-thirty the important figures among the assembled people began to write their names on the beam .... With unerring accuracy [former Basketball star] Willis Reed put the basketball into the net attached to the beam (Sabbagh 1990: 317).

Sabbagh's account fails to mention that a flag was attached to the beam and that the ironworkers had also inscribed the beam. I know this is the case because Sabbagh's book contains photographs of the ironworkers, sixty-four floors up, jockeying the final beam into place with a flag and some of their inscriptions clearly visible. Perhaps Sabbagh thought the flag was placed on the beam as a last minute whim and was not an important element of the ceremony. The reality is that, from the perspective of the ironworkers at least, Willis Reed and the Basketball hoop were unimportant affectations placed there by the buildings' owner to garner publicity for the project.