Terminal Tower Twightlights

joey: 24th May 2011 - 20:10 GMT

Cleveland Terminal Tower in reality
no trick photography

EvilGentleman: 29th May 2011 - 09:04 GMT

At the time its structural frame was completed in 1927, the Terminal Tower was the second-tallest building in the world at 708 feet tall (771 feet to the top of the flagpole), after New York's 792-foot Woolworth Building. This situation did not last long, as by 1930, the 927-foot Bank of Manhattan Trust Building at 40 Wall Street (Today known as The Trump Tower) was completed, to be quickly exceeded later the same year by the 1050-foot Chrysler Building (although it was actually 2 feet shorter to the roof, at 925 feet). None of this would matter a year later, when the 1250-foot Empire State Building was completed.

My great-grandfather, Stephen French was in the construction crew that built the Terminal Tower. He was an ironworker who would walk the beams of the skyscraper's skeleton, and then rivet the beams of the next floor to that floor, and so on. According to family history, he was apparently doing some exterior work on the higher portions of the building on November 14, 1929 when he slipped and fell to his death on the sidewalk below.

I consider it to be my great-grandfather's monument, built by his own hands.