Lee Henderson stands some 380 feet above the ground on the still wall-less top floor of a building in progress. For all the solidity of what supports him-a concrete floor, then 29 stories anchored in bedrock-it is a precarious-feeling place to be, made more so by the steady wind huffing through it. Peering over the edge at the lofty construction crane perched alongside, Henderson is two safety wires and one step away from a meeting with his maker.
”It`s a hell of a life, man, a hell of a life,” says the carpenter foreman, a 23-year construction veteran. ”I`ll never forget what Nixon said when we were working on the Sears Tower. He said, `Construction workers make too much money.` I`d like to have taken him up to the 90th floor and walked him across one of those beams. You never can make too much money when each time you leave in the morning, you might not come home.”
Compared to the Sears Tower-still the world`s tallest, although competitors are in the works-and others Henderson has worked on, this building is a sprout: 30 stories at 515 N. State St. that will serve as national headquarters of the American Medical Association.
But a fall from 30 stories would likely carry the same consequence as a fall from 110, and so the same level of caution is required. Among
construction workers, Henderson says, ”Most everybody`s got a theory like this: `When my time is up, it`s up.` But the minute you`re not afraid of anything, that`s when you are dangerous.”
He speaks of ”having respect” for the building. ”You cannot come out here drunk, high, half asleep, mind on a woman. You have GOT to be alert,
`cause if you ain`t, you`ll be in a wheelchair somewhere, and your woman`ll be coming by with roses.”
The AMA building may not be the highest-profile project in town, but it is, in microcosm, illustrative of recent history in the Loop and environs, where the cause of development has come up roses as most every available plot of land has been planted with something steely, perpendicular and available for lease.
A finished building is one thing: You can roam through its lobby, ride its elevators, swill coffee in its snack shop. But there is a kind of mystery to a building under construction. The temporary plywood walls standing where you once breezed down the sidewalk almost compel you to contemplate the building; at the same time, those walls shield it from you, make it seem as though something revolutionary might be going on behind.
A glimpse on the other side reveals a world foreign to most city-dwellers, a downtown workplace where, every day for sometimes years at a time, power ties are replaced by power tools, and heavy boots and hardhats are as much the uniform as a business suit will be when the building is done. And while the person on the street can know intuitively that a frenzy of work goes into erecting a high-rise, it is understandable if he is still found puzzling over the specifics.
Into this gap steps Henderson, skilled carpenter turned temporary tour guide: After years of knowing his trade in particular and coming to understand the construction business in general, this breezy Wednesday on the job is a chance to pass on some of what he has learned, to-to get academic for a second-deconstruct construction.
Henderson, a compact 46-year-old, responds to the task with a vengeance, finding religion in the details and philosophy in the long view, concocting then chasing down metaphors with the eagerness of the college professor whose classes are always oversubscribed. Asked at one point if he likes his work, he turns into an exuberant existentialist: ”I`ve done it so long I don`t know nothing else to do now. I`m too far up the road to turn around. I got to ride this horse to the end. I got to ride it `till I can get off and walk. I don`t care how rough it gets, I got to ride it.”
Workin` for the general
Although he has worked for half a dozen companies since moving to Chicago from Drew, Miss., in 1961, his current mount is Schal Associates Inc., the general contractor hired to put up the building and one of the largest in town. (The John Buck Co. and Miller-Klutznick-David-Gr ay Co. are the developers.)
Beneath the general contractor are men and a few women from 20 different trades and 30 separate subcontractors. To further complicate the choreography, some of the subcontractors have farmed out their own subcontracts. The number of people on site between 7 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., although there is a lot of overtime, can range from 240 to 400. ”It gets pretty hectic here during the day,” says Chuck Blazek, the Schal superintendent on site.
A person who doubts that such a building is a complicated thing has only to look at the wall of blueprints hanging in the Schal office on the building`s fourth floor; Blazek estimates there are 1,000 separate drawings.
”You know, we halfway run this job buffet-style,” Henderson says. ”We got the whole pig. We give you an ear, you a ham, whatever. We got the whole hog.”
Each of the subcontractors is bonded, he explains, meaning if, for some reason, it doesn`t finish its work, then the bonding company will have to see that it gets done. ”Then the bonding company`s got a bonding company. You know what I`m talkin` about?” he says. ”This is the big league-SUPER big league. You can make one bad mistake and blow $50,000. If you ain`t on top of it, you can be saying, `I USED to be a contractor, but now I`m swingin` this hammer.`
”You always have pressure on you to get this job done. You never have that time where you can feel let down. From the time you get in till the time you get back home, everything is just time, time, quick time, quick time. And from the time we get out here on the job, they teach us one thing: Time is money.”
They`ll work right through the coldest days of winter, the general contractor supplying heat when and where it`s necessary. ”The money`s too large now. I don`t care if it`s too cold: You got to find a way to work.” For instance, during December`s subzero cold spell, Henderson says, the concrete roof was poured. Workers laid blankets over the top and pumped in heat from below to help cure it.
”No one shuts down in construction anymore,” he says. ”From the time you start going, you work. If you`ve got two years to build it, you build it in two years-`cause after that you start paying rent yourself. And who wants to rent a big building like this?”
Schal versus all?
The relationship between Schal-the ”general”-and its subcontractors is not always lovey-dovey. On one floor, it is difficult not to notice, expressed in green spray paint, a two-word summation of the painter`s feelings toward the general. The first word is ”Schal”; the second starts with an `S.`
Henderson sticks his head in the 19th floor hut that serves as on-site headquarters for Great Lakes Plumbing (most of the companies have their own headquarters on-site). A dozen guys inside are drinking coffee and talking in the heat. A well-thumbed Hustler sits on the table in the middle.
”This is our break time,” says one of the plumbers. ”We don`t want to talk to no Schal people.”
Henderson takes the jab in stride. Verbal digs are a fact of life in construction, he explains, with each trade sticking up for its own. If, say, the carpenters and the electricians aren`t getting along, things can get tense. ”We`re like packs,” he says. ”Like dog packs.” Looked at one way, though, all the subcontractors are one pack and the Schal people are another. It is, says Henderson, a natural tension: ”The general is like the schoolteacher. Nobody likes the schoolteacher `cause she gives `em homework.” ”The general is like Dick Butkus.” He pauses, puzzled. The simile is going awry.
”What`s the name of the Bears` coach? Ditka. The general is just like Ditka,” he says, recovering the fumble. ”You know, he calls all the plays, keeps everything in perspective. When things ain`t going good, he calls meetings, gets everybody back in line.”
When Henderson gets a command to check if the toe boards are still up, he finds himself in the Ditka role. Toe boards are 1-by-6-inch boards put up on each floor as temporary walls along still-open outer edges and on the edges of the elevator and main heating shafts.
Their job is to keep discarded scraps of pipe, for instance, from being kicked down a shaft and onto a workman below. The general bears the main responsibility for on-the-job injury.
”Pardon me, sir,” he says with mock politeness to an ironworker installing the braces that will help hold up the building`s curtain wall-its skin of glass and metal-”is it possible to put these toe boards back when you finish?”
”We always do,” the man responds.
Good-naturedly, the two men trade accusations of irresponsibility. But down one floor, at approximately the same spot in the building, Henderson points at the perimeter.
”Look here. No toe boards. Everybody gives you a song and dance.”
Working for the general, Henderson says, ”you got to be a good public relations man, get along with everybody.” The goal is not only to keep things smooth but to ”get a hand from them-WITHOUT them charging you.”
A piece of pie
As seen from above, the building is triangular, with a purely esthetic 4- story opening cut out in one corner near the top. ”We call this `the pie shape.` Don`t it look like a little slice of pie?” he asks. He shrugs. ”You know architects.”
There are, on this Wednesday, dozens of different jobs going on at once:
huge, torpedo-like boilers being installed in the basement next to heating fans the size of jet engines; masonry being done in a stairwell; curtain wall going up on the upper floors; elevator tracks going in; concrete being sanded in another stairwell; wiring tubes being installed on a floor the AMA will inhabit; bathrooms coming together; stone facade being readied for the lobby; drywall; door frames; half-a-dozen guys working on the maze of huge boxes in the basement that will regulate the electricity. . .
This has been going on, more or less, since December 1988, and now-more than a year later-it is about 75 percent done. The AMA, the initial tenant, is expected to start moving in, on time, late this spring.
Coordinating all the various crews is like plotting some elaborate movie musical: B can`t go on until A is finished singing, and C and D have to come on, stage left, while B is in his final chorus.
Henderson has a less labored analogy for it. ”Everything here,” he says, ”is like chess. You move this way, you move that way, and then you find out you got to move back this way to counteract THAT move. You know what I`m talkin` about?”
As he is talking, he is looking at a six-foot segment of steel beam-used, it turns out, to help move elevator motors into place on the floor below-poking through a once-finished stairwell wall like a college football team tearing through the cheerleaders` sign upon taking the field.
The general contractor, Henderson explains, will have to repair the damage.
If he tries to ask the subcontractor to redo the wall, ”They`ll say,
`Hey, man, I put that up there once.` Anything that doesn`t have a contract, we own it.”
The result is that workers for the general end up doing odd jobs:
Henderson will spend part of this day helping his crew erect tarpaulin lean-tos against a lobby wall so that heat can be blown in so that the stone cement will adhere. Another Schal worker is seen at one point doing nothing more glamorous than washing windows.
On a recent windy night, Henderson was awakened by a telephone call.
”Mother Nature misused $3,000 worth of tarps. They set sail on me. I had to come in at 1 a.m., but I didn`t mind. That was double time. For 43 bucks an hour, I`ll get up.
”If you work for the general, you go to work when others don`t. You want real hardcore guys working for you if you`re the general.”
Although the worst he has ever been hurt was during the Sears construction, when a nail gun wielded by another worker accidentally went off, sending two metal projectiles through nerves in Henderson`s left arm, he has been on jobs where people have died.
”After a death,” he says, ”no one hardly says anything. I heard the insurance company, before you build a building, actually estimates how many deaths are gonna happen on the building.”
Ups, downs
Of all the jobs on the site, says Henderson, there is one that is primary. He points to a tall, older man standing by the pair of temporary elevators that ferry workers and machines up the outside of the building.
”That`s Harold, the up-and-downer. He`s the elevator operator.”
Henderson explains that the two elevator operators, from the same union local as the men who work the cranes, are the highest-paid tradesmen on site.
”These two guys right here are the heart of the job. If they shut down, 60, 70 percent of the job has to shut down. They work their butts off. And they are CROSS at all times.”
Henderson explains later that an elevator on a building`s outside is more properly called a ”man-horse.” The term is appropriate because, in stopping, they slam to a halt like a horse trying to throw its rider, a disquieting thought at 300 feet above street level.
Over the years, Henderson has developed some theories about his breed:
– ”Construction workers are pranksters. We`re the biggest pranksters in the world. We`re cocky.”
– ”Time clock? It`s on the Wrigley Building. Most construction workers, they don`t wear a watch. `Cause when you wear a watch, it don`t move.”
– ”Everybody`s a little rough. They got leather on `em.”
– ”The average construction worker, he don`t want to hear no bull,
`cause he has to face things nobody else does. He`s a little short-tempered.”
– ”All construction workers are comedians. All of `em.”
– ”I`d hate to have a lady carpenter as a wife.” (He doesn`t: His, Carol, works a desk job for the city. They have three adult children and live in the far South Side Victory Heights neighborhood.)
Walking through the building, he makes another observation, one that is unquestionably accurate. ”They`ve tied in with the city sewer already,” he says. ”I can smell that.”
Up on the roof
From the roof of the AMA building, you get an exhilarating view of Chicago: 360 degrees in which you can see not only much of the heart of the city, but at least 11 other construction projects going on simultaneously.
Although Henderson has worked on some of the most prominent buildings in town, including the Hancock and Sears Towers, he says he does not walk around looking up, thinking, ”I built that.”
Workers ”mainly talk about that when they retire,” he says.
Looking now at the Sears Tower, though, he is asked about that job.
”That made everybody a little goofy,” he says. ”The thing was, `I`m going up taller than you.` So they climbed the antennas, all kinds of stuff. I used to say, `I`ve gone higher than any black man in America.` ”
He shifts his gaze to the east. ”One building I admire out of all the buildings down here-for the work and everything-is the Wrigley Building. Look at that,” he says, pointing out the intricate details seemingly everywhere on the building`s surface.
”Hey,” he says. ”It`s not like that now. It`s, `Get `em up, get on to the next one`-WITH quality work. It`s, `Let`s get somebody in here payin` some rent!` ”
He smiles and pulls out another cigarette. ”You got to smoke,” says Henderson. ”What else is there to do?”
