The same could be said for much of the New York skyline. For the moment, though, this structure is the domain of the ironworkers. In a year or so, hundreds of accountants will occupy the building. Collins is one of a hundred or so ironworkers currently employed by Boston Properties to erect the steel frame of the new 40-story headquarters for Ernst & Young at 5 Times Square. ''God forbid I do fall,'' he said, ''I'm going on the inside of the building.'' And when he walks on the perimeter of the building, he makes a point of leaning slightly to the inside. When the wind blows hard, he'll add a few more bolts to his bolt bag to lower his center of gravity. I tell the other guys, look, I got size 10 1/2 feet. ''It took me six months to get used to it,'' he said. Collins, a wiry man of 40, walking I-beams 250 feet above Manhattan is just another day on the job. Nobody down there was paying much attention to the man walking the beams overhead, though one young man in an oversize down jacket paused to look up and offer an assessment: ''That is crazy.''Ĭrazy it may appear, but to Mr. Below, to his right - far, far below - was the busy intersection of Seventh Avenue and 41st Street. Walking quickly but steadily, he traversed the 10-foot beam.īelow to his left, 25 feet down, was a deck of corrugated metal.

Collins carried 45 pounds of equipment on his belt, including two spud wrenches an eight-pound sledgehammer known to ironworkers as a beater a crowbarlike tool used to pry steel beams and a few dozen inch-thick bolts in a hip pouch. ON a recent winter afternoon, as the temperature dipped below freezing and a brisk wind blew along the cross streets of Midtown Manhattan, an ironworker named John Collins stepped out onto a six-inch-wide steel beam 24 stories above Seventh Avenue and started to walk across it.

Towering pile of hats