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Skyscraper workers1/6/2024 ![]() ![]() No one wanted to admit that the expensive bridge appeared increasingly unable to bear its own weight. was strapped for cash, the company was eager to accept his design, which specified far less steel than was typical for a bridge of that size.Īs the bridge grew, disturbing bends in the structure were explained away by Cooper and John Deans, chief engineer of Phoenix Bridge, the company building the bridge, as damage probably caused offsite before the beams were set in place. American structural engineer Theodore Cooper had designed the Quebec Bridge, a cantilevered truss bridge that would extend 3,220 feet across the St. When the first apprentice was trained, a new one came up from the reservation, and by 1907 more than 70 skilled structural ironworkers from the reservation were working on bridges. Each riveting gang brought an apprentice from Kahnawake to learn the trade on the job. “In other words, they were natural-born bridge-men.” According to company lore, 12 young men-enough for three riveting gangs-were thus trained.Īfter the Canadian Pacific Bridge was completed, the young Mohawk ironworkers moved on to work on the Soo Bridge, which spanned the St. “It turned out that putting riveting tools in their hands was like putting ham with eggs,” the Dominion official declared. So the company decided to train a few of the persistent Mohawks. Few men wanted to do it fewer could do it well, and in good construction years there were sometimes too few riveters to meet construction demand, according to the New Yorker article. The Indians were especially interested in riveting, one of the most dangerous jobs in construction and, then as now, one of the highest paid. The last girder was signed by Mohawk ironworkers, in keeping with ironworking tradition. There was a terrible irony in dismantling what they had helped to erect: Hundreds of Mohawks had worked on the World Trade Center from 1966 to 1974. In the months that followed, many Mohawk ironworkers volunteered to help in the cleanup. They helped survivors escape from the threatened buildings, and when the towers came crashing down, they joined in the search for victims. Fires were raging in the towers and the ironworkers knew that steel weakens and eventually melts under extreme heat. Because many of them had worked on the 110-story World Trade Center some three decades earlier, they were familiar with the buildings and hoped they could help people escape faster. 11, 2001, headed immediately to the site of the disaster. Like Oddo, most of the Mohawk crews working in New York City on Sept. “When the plane hit the second tower, I knew it was all planned.” He got on his cell phone to report the crash to Mike Swamp, business manager of Ironworkers Local 440, but he began to wonder. ![]() Crew members watched in disbelief as the plane crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center, just 10 blocks away.Īt first, Oddo says, he thought it was pilot error. “I looked up and I could see the rivets on the plane, I could read the serial numbers it was so low, and I thought ‘What is he doing going down Broadway?’” recalls the crew’s leader, Dick Oddo. Suddenly a jet roared overhead, barely 50 feet from the crane they were using to set the steel girders in place. High atop a New York University building one bright September day, Mohawk ironworkers were just setting some steel when the head of the crew heard a big rumble to the north. For generations, Mohawk Indians have left their reservations in or near Canada to raise skyscrapers in the heart of New York City. ![]()
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