Nerves of Steel: Looking Back at the Rise of Tribeca's Citigroup Building

In 1987, an ironworker stands atop the structure that would become the Shearson Lehman Plaza. Today it is the Citigroup building. Photo: Carl Glassman

It was the summer of 1987 and across North Moore Street from our apartment,  an office tower advanced skyward. The 40-story Shearson Lehman Brothers building at 388 Greenwich St.—today it houses Citigroup—was almost eye level with my family’s apartment on the 37th floor, providing a good view of workers securing the steel bones into place.

Looking at the photos I took back then, I marvel anew at the derring-do of the ironworkers. Some with no hard hats, all without safety harnesses, as they straddled beams like tightrope walkers and maneuvered precariously within inches of the precipice.

These men would have fit right into Lewis Hine’s hair-raising photos of ironworkers atop the rising Empire State Building. But we can hardly imagine such freewheeling aerial work on today’s skyscrapers.

Jim Rasenberger, the man who literally wrote the book on ironworkers, “High Steel: The Daring Men Who Built the World’s Greatest Skyline,” said much changed in the early 2000s, with stiffer federal regulations and a clampdown on safety by the big construction companies. Until then, the men who worked highest up, connecting girders to the steel frame, could bend the rules in part because they considered harnesses restrictive. “They had to be almost balletic up there because they have to be able to get out of the way of a piece of steel if the wind catches it coming in on the crane,” Rasenberger said.

Besides, the author noted, “The guys I knew hated safety measures. They didn’t want anyone telling them what to do.”