A Brief On Colorado Buildering History

[gore galore]

A Brief On Colorado Buildering History
by gore galore

Buildering is such an esoteric part of climbing that one would not expect to find anything of the sort on 14ers.com. While I don't believe there are any trip reports of this activity, there is a single “Buildering” thread from 2018 which is unusual to find on a peakbagging site. And since there is a solitary thread on the buildering subject it seems justifiable to have something of a history of buildering in Colorado written for the site.

Although I have never buildered myself I date my acquaintance with the subject from George Willig's climb of the 110 stories of the south tower of the World Trade Center on May 26,1977. I distinctly remember it from the media sensationalism of the time that portrayed Willig's climb as more of a stunt than as a climbing discipline. And I was so caught up in the sensationalism that I readily bought his book “Going It Alone” published in 1979.

Rediscovering Willig's book and paging through it again not only heightened my interest in the subject of buildering but furthered my suspect qualifications as the one to write this brief on Colorado buildering history.

THE ANCIENT ONES
Buildering in some form has been around as long as there have been combinations and interactions of humans with buildings. The ancient ones of southwestern Colorado were probably the first to builder in some form. In addition to ropes, ladders, pegs and steps to reach their cliffside abodes, they no doubt also made a few buildering moves to gain their entrances.

FRONTIER COLORADO
Early forms of buildering in frontier Colorado were surprisingly found among children playing among buildings and unfinished homes usually with falls resulting in fractured bones.

In one instance an 1883 newspaper account reported that Little Willie Arthur and another boy were in the Comstock mine building climbing the rope. Willie climbed up the rope about fifteen feet when the rope broke loose from its fastening and he fell to the floor fracturing the large bone of his left leg.

Another incident occurred in a nearly completed Denver home in 1895 when several children were playing about the building, climbing the pillars and exploring the interior. According to a newspaper report, Harry age 14 and a couple of the other boys went up into the second story and Harry, with an air of bravado, stood upon a window sill. He lost his footing and fell a distance of twenty feet to the ground fracturing both wrists.

Another rudimentary form of buildering was found in frontier fire departments of early Colorado. The “pompier corps” were a body of men who were trained to climb buildings by the aid of ladders armed with hooks, which they fastened in the windows above as they ascended. Doubters saw no value to this system pointing out that "pompier exhibitions always cause a sensation at tournaments, for the crowd invariably expects to see the climber and his little ladder come tumbling to the ground."

EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY HUMAN FLIES
In early twentieth century America as buildings rose upward so too arose individuals known as human flies who climbed the exteriors of tall buildings that attracted hundreds and sometimes tens of thousands of spectators. These daredevils often climbed with publicity in mind and were backed by promoters of hotels and banks and other buildings of note. Others climbed to raise money for war bonds or for charities. Some of their showmanship acts included planned slips of the hands or feet or hanging by one arm from a ledge that wowed the crowds below.

Many of these building acrobats fell to their deaths but some preserved long enough to become famous. The most famous of the human flies was Harry Gardiner who climbed 700 buildings between the years of 1905 to 1929 without using any special equipment and lived to the old age of eighty-nine years.

“Steeplejack” Charles Miller's moniker harkened back to the beginning of the industrial age in Britain where traveling steeplejacks were employed to repair the soaring chimneys of factory buildings. Miller used no climbing equipment in a career that lasted from 1900 to 1910 when he fell 60 feet from the fourth floor of a building in Los Angeles.

George Polley climbed 2,000 buildings between 1910 to 1920 and Henry Roland toured the country with his act in the 1920s and 1930s until one of his acts failed him and he fell to his death in 1937.

By the 1930s many cities passed laws and ordinances that prohibited climbing the exterior of buildings such that the traveling acts of the human flies gradually disappeared. In 1971, seventy-six-year-old Benny Fox proclaimed himself as the last of the “human flies.” He toured the country for six decades climbing the walls of city buildings, “on suction-tipped toes and fingers of steel.”

COLORADO HUMAN FLIES AND SPIDERS
Among the human flies were also the human spiders as some were known. Twenty-three-year-old Bill Strothers, the world's champion building climber, known as the “human spider” climbed at the speed of less than a story a minute and defeated George Gardiner the “human fly” by thirty minutes in a race up the slippery face of the statehouse in Atlanta, Georgia.

Strothers performed stunts that were more than climbing buildings such as riding a bicycle around the cornice of a building twenty stories up, balancing on window sills, and falling four or five stories in space and catching himself on a cornice ledge, climbing blindfolded, and sitting on top of the ball of flagpoles.

Upon his arrival in Denver in August of 1919 Strothers climbed the sheer face of the Gas and Electric building at Fifteenth and Champa Streets, a surface of glazed brick that offers little finger holds, stood on his head on the cornice ten stories up, scrambled up the seventy-foot flagpole at the roof of the building and then stood again on his head all in eighteen minutes “while thousands of persons in the street below sent rounds of cheers soaring upward.”

Two days later Strothers climbed the Denver courthouse building in nineteen-and one-half minutes before a crowd of several thousand. His progress up the corniced and pillard facade of the building was highlighted on five different occasions where he stood on his head at the edge of the cornices and on the head of the figure at the top of the dome. Many in the crowd exclaimed that “never before had they seen a climber so devoid of fear and so skilled in acrobatics.”

A month later in October of 1919, newspapers reported that Strothers died climbing an office building in Omaha where he fell five stories. But the press reports were apparently untrue as his manager reported him in California giving exhibitions and was about ready to leave for Fort Worth, Texas for the same. He was reported “feeling fine and fit.” Perhaps the reports of his premature death were part of the traveling act.

Another human fly was not so fortunate. In August of 1927 “Babe” White, the “balancing marvel” came to climb Denver's skyscrapers. He announced plans to climb the Midland Savings Building at 17th and Glenarm where “en route he will execute all the thrills in his spine-tickling repertoire.” “Babe's” luck held out until 1933 when he fell four stories to his death from a downtown office building in Santa Monica, California landing on his head at the pavement.

Harry Gardiner, “The Human Fly” ascended the twelve stories of the Foster building in downtown Denver in May of 1916 in the presence of thousands of people who crowded the streets. He used tiny niches for hand and foot holds on the stone and terra cotta face of the building. As he went from story to story, he performed acrobatic tricks by swinging himself in and out with only the crevices in the walls to hold onto. The newspaper report of the event read that, “so risky was his undertaking that many people in the crowd were compelled to turn their faces away, fearful at any instant they would see him hurtling to the pavement.”

Gardiner also climbed the state capitol building while in Denver from the ground to the large electric light globe on the extreme top of the dome as several thousand persons were kept in continual suspense. As part of his Colorado tour, Gardiner was scheduled for two exhibitions of climbing the 140-foot Casino Tower for the grand opening of the Lakeside Amusement Park on May 27, 1916, before traveling to Glenwood Springs for exhibitions of his skill and daring during the June Strawberry Days Celebration.

In June of 1918 another “human fly,” Jack Williams scaled the side of the Daniels and Fisher Tower and mounted the top of the thirty-five-foot flagpole as a crowd of several hundred assembled below to watch. Several days later arrangements were made for Williams to climb to the top of the dome on Guggenheim Hall at the Colorado School of Mines. This would probably be an early climb of a campus building in Colorado.

An earlier “human fly,” H. H. Bryce climbed the steeple of Christ Methodist church, at the corner of Ogden and Twenty-second avenue in 1905 not so much for showmanship but to paint the steeple. He used a set of suction pads and two ropes in making the climb to the topmost pinnacle of the highest tower in Colorado. “The one great secret of the business is the suction pads we use,” said Bryce. “I get my pads from London.”

Bryce also painted flagpoles as he did for the four flagpoles at a height of 185 feet on the Brown Palace hotel in 1903. Bryce gave some advice for the climbing of flagpoles. “Flag poles are not apt to be very strong, and it requires considerable skill to keep them from snapping off, which is accomplished by moving around on all sides to preserve the equilibrium.”

Among the human flies there are a few records of women climbing structures. In Eaton, Colorado, five young women climbed hand over hand to the top of the 231-foot new cement smokestack of the sugar factory in 1916. Their feat was accomplished on a dare by their male companions who promised each of them a box of chocolates.

Not all human fly attempts were successful though. In 1923 F. C. Smith attempted to climb the Ernest & Cranmer building at Seventeenth and Curtis streets in Denver. A huge crowd gathered to watch. After reaching only the third floor he became visibly nervous. A policeman called him in from the third-floor window where “Smith's face was streaked with perspiration and he was trembling.” Smith was taken to city hall for a hearing on his unsanctioned climbing act and was admonished not to try any more building scaling stunts in the city.

There were many hazards in climbing buildings for the human flies. Jack Williams who performed earlier in Denver, climbed the Odd Fellows building and flagpole in Longmont in July of 1918 in front of several hundred people. He made the climb despite the fact that the surface of the building was wet from an early shower and “one false step or slip would be his undoing.”

Bill Strothers on his climb of the Gas and Electric building had “a close call” at the fifth story. Just as he had secured a three-fingered grip upon the slanting, slippery ledge of the window and was about to reach over with his other arm and grasp the ledge, two young boys shut the window in his face. As his feet swung free from the ledge below, he found support on top of the open window below and waited until someone had opened the window above. In the crowd below, “women were heard to utter excited exclamations of fear and were seen to turn away their heads.” At the seventh story he allowed himself to fall two body lengths before catching himself. Perhaps the fifth story “close call” was also part of the act.

And in a scene reminiscent of children climbing buildings in frontier Colorado, Donald Ripley, twelve years old, climbed the three stories of the McGraw building in Fort Morgan in front of a large crowd in 1923 when the scheduled human fly failed to show. Having scaled the notches of the wall on his perilous climb, Donald also descended the wall by the same means as the crowd cheered.

THE NIGHT CLIMBERS
Modern sport buildering began in England in the 1890's with the night climbers of Cambridge University so called because the students climbed the architecture and roof tops of the university buildings under the cover of darkness to avoid detection.

Climbing was by means of ledges and drainpipes and railings and in some cases by special arrangement for a useful window to remain unlocked. Rows of revolving spikes were among the principal hazards. The well-known English climber Geoffrey Winthrop Young documented those climbs in his “Roof Climber's Guide To Trinity,” 1900.

JAMES W. ALEXANDER
The earliest known night climber to come to Colorado was James W. Alexander, a Princeton University mathematics professor. Alexander came to Colorado not for climbing buildings but rather for “relief of allergy.” Between the years of 1921 and 1924 Alexander without prior mountain experience made 20 ascents of Longs Peak of which Alexander's Chimney on the east face, the southwest ridge and the northwest (Keyhole) ridge were first ascents.

Described as tall and slender with a long reach, Alexander also had a passion for climbing the campus buildings in the off season at Princeton University. He and his wife put up various routes on the dormitories where he introduced roof climbing or night climbing following in the English tradition.

Alexander had an ingenious mountaineering gymnasium fitted up on a roof of a tower with parallel bars, high bars and other apparatuses and gadgets where a series of exercises were devised in conjunction with the architectural outcrops of the building where “only those with perfect balance and steady heads could perform without an ungraceful if undangerous tumble.”

A visiting Englishman described a climb with Alexander on a neo-Gothic tower where the critical pitch involved the “sliding descent of a sloping rooflet and, just before one would have fallen into space over the edge, a leap upwards and across a four-foot gap to a safe hand-hold on a well-placed gargoyle from which one dangled until a stout arm-pull landed one safely on a broad stone gutter.”

Ultimately Alexander's climbing exploits on the buildings of Princeton University were ended by the insistence of the campus police. Two years before his death in 1972 Alexander was driven around the Princeton campus as he pointed out the various routes he and his wife had put up on the dormitories when he introduced roof-climbing there more than half a century before.

Despite his proficiency in buildering James Alexander had no known protege among Colorado mountaineers for climbing buildings during his time in Colorado.

CAMP HALE TENTH MOUNTAIN DIVISION SOLDIERS
Following in the tradition of the human flies and spiders and the night climbers were some of the soldiers of the Tenth Mountain Division at Camp Hale in 1943. The troopers in displays of showmanship after a few drinks were known to rappell off the balconies of the eight-story atrium lobby of Denver's Brown Palace Hotel and the fire escapes of the Vendome Hotel in Leadville.

Among the soldiers was Pvt. John Eberhardt who apparently not content with weeks of arduous climbing in the mountains, and whether out of showmanship or sport tackled the north face of the Hotel Denver in Glenwood Springs – and made it to the second floor. As the report goes, “all this was accomplished to the tune of two MPs shrieking below.” After accomplishing this feat of daring and endurance, John “spent the balance of the evening treating the MPs – who trailed him faithfully wherever he went that night – to milk shake after milk shake.”

During a road trip on a previous Memorial Day weekend, I detoured into Glenwood Springs crossing the Grand Avenue bridge to the first stoplight and taking a left turn and then two more lefts where I slowly drove the street in front of the north face of the three-story Hotel Denver. A quick U-turn brought me to a parking place for a walk along the hotel sidewalk.

I am not sure exactly where Pvt. Eberhardt made his climb to the row of second story windows, but I could picture the MPs on the sidewalk below shouting him down from his second story perch. I gave a salute to Pvt. Eberhart in the direction of the second story as part of my Memorial Day observance and then continued onward with my road trip.

POST WORLD WAR II
In the post-World War II years interest in buildering grew from those with gymnastic abilities or rock climbing skills as an adjunct to their main pursuits. The tradition of the night climbers was found on the state's college campuses particularly among the buildings of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

In 1953 two students “defying the long arm of the law and the wrath of the Dean's office” made a nocturnal assault on the “east face” of Macky Auditorium. They were turned back ten feet short of their goal by the sudden arrival of the campus police. It was rumored that a night or two later a lone climber made it all the way to the top “but this cannot be established since no register was left.”

Pat Ament wrote of the buildering scene in Boulder in the mid to late sixties in his book “High Endeavors.” Boulder High School after dark, the city library, and CU's Norlin Library were buildering places where convenient brick walls, window ledges, pillars, door jambs, shingles, drain pipes, and aerials made for good holds. Ament further noted that “a church provides not only good buildering but sanctuary in the event of police.”

Ament spent endless hours on the architecture of the CU campus buildings in the 1960s and onward where he later recalled the possibilities were virtually limitless. The whole C.U. campus of about a hundred buildings is made of walls of Lyons formation sandstone where there are “many walls of varying sizes, some easy, some very difficult. We especially enjoyed very long traverses, back and forth, on certain routes as many times as possible, sometimes staying on a traverse for several hours.”

John Sherman in his book, “Sherman Exposed,” 1999 relates a buildering escapade on one of the CU dorms when he and Harrison Dekker spotted a six-pack chilling on a windowsill a few stories up. “Inch-wide gaps between flagstones provided hearty handholds, and the jagged edges of the rocks left ample room for the feet.” Just as those 1953 students were met by the police, Sherman and Dekker were caught by the cops while consuming the evidence.

John Gill developed many buildering routes on the campus buildings of the University of Southern Colorado in Pueblo where he became an assistant professor of mathematics in 1971. In the mid 1970s Gill and Ament toured the buildering problems at the University. Gill demonstrated the techniques of ascending the slick cement square corner of a wall. Later they illegally traversed a stone wall above an open polar bear pit at the Pueblo Municipal Zoo. Gill had enrolled at Georgia Tech University in 1954 and as an outgrowth of his gymnastic interest began exploring the campus for climbing possibilities. In 1955 he and a friend climbed at night to the top of an overhanging light tower on the football stadium.

Buildering also took place on such campuses as Fort Lewis College in Durango, Western State in Gunnison, Colorado State University, the University of Denver and Colorado College.

Members of the Colorado Mountain Club also engaged in some buildering at their club room location. An October 9, 1965, report of a Colorado Mountain Club climb of the South Face of the club rooms then located on the 3rd floor of a Josephine Street building in Denver “was not a first ascent, either for the climber or of the route.” It was acknowledged that others have previously scaled the walls and roof. As a favorite route it “suggests that a register be placed in the third floor john so that all successful ascents may be recorded and due recognition be given these heroic climbers.”

URBAN CLIMBERS
Since the rise in popularity of climbing gyms in the 1990's and the events of 9/11 that heightened security of buildings and structures, buildering saw something of a decline. But in a prophetic sense the Aspen Daily News in 1995 ran a short story of 10-and 11-year-olds climbing buildings in town and called them Urban Climbers. Fortunately, there were no subsequent stories of falls and fractured bones as among children in frontier Colorado.

Today urban climbing flourishes in the great metropolitan areas of the world and one can page through issues of Urban Climber magazine and other resources to get an idea of the extent of this climbing discipline and its manifestations.

There are probably some on 14ers.com who still remember George Willig and his climb of the World Trade Center forty-eight years ago today and maybe even a few who later bought his book like me. And someday someone without suspect qualifications will write a complete history of buildering in Colorado.

[justiner]

Just wondering if I can get some change for the Coke machine,

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