A rope railing and a good sense of balance separated this ironworker from sure disaster as he looked down upon a six-floor parking deck and across the urban scene 279 feet below him, where Capitol Avenue meets Louisiana Street.
When the structure he was building — known today as the Union Plaza Building — was finally ready for occupation in September 1969, the home of Union National Bank would be 21 stories tall. But when Arkansas Gazette photographer Larry Obsitnik took this photo on July 16, 1968, the unfinished skyscraper was only 19 stories tall.
The familiar granite pin-striping of today's facade had yet to be applied, and the metal skeleton had not been dressed in concrete, granite, aluminum and glass. Ironworkers stood on wooden planks or corrugated steel.
Getting to the 19th floor was not half the fun, the Gazette's Carrick Patterson reported. One walked 15 flights up steep steps in various stages of existence to reach a swaying, four-story ladder whose sections had been welded together at jaunty angles. After crawling onto the 19th floor, the climber saw that the ladder was hanging atop an I-beam using L-shaped hooks.
The steel work was managed by Allied Steel Co. of Oklahoma City, but most of the crew lived in Little Rock and belonged to Ironworkers Local 321.
They faced many hazards, especially high winds and flooring failures. Stepping through a hole in temporary flooring was a common hazard, a foreman told the Gazette. It was easy to get confused because the layers of corrugated material created an optical illusion. One of the ironworkers who helped to erect Union National Bank was the survivor of just such an accident on another job in which he fell 87 floors and landed in the hospital for a year.
But the foreman explained that working at great heights didn't bother experienced ironworkers as much as it did the reporter, because the result of falling from four floors up would be about the same as falling 100 floors.
Print Headline: Remember when, Arkansas?
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