Topping Off (1/18/2017)
Cold and rainy weather can hamper a construction project, especially one involving concrete pours. Excess water can alter the concrete mixture and cold weather can affect the curing process. Rest assured the BBC/Miller & Long team has taken the appropriate steps to maintain the integrity of the concrete. Nonetheless, the team lost a few days because of the weather. They will lose a few more as the Secret Service closes down streets and construction projects during the inauguration. As a result, topping off the building will take place in mid-February.
Since you left for winter break, work on the Capitol Crossing project has progressed steadily. The wall panels for the eastern portion of the highway entrance portal on Massachusetts Avenue have all been poured and the final portion of the roof over that section will be poured next week. Traffic patterns have shifted on Massachusetts Avenue so that piles can be driven for the western portion of the new highway entrance portal. The new entrance should be operational sometime in April. Additional piles have been driven for the parking garage adjacent to the Historical Synagogue while lagging and excavations continue in the excavation pit.
Construction sites must be dewatered to lower the water table and stabilize the soil so that the building’s foundation does not sink. To do so, wells have been dug and subterranean water has been pumped out of the soil under the excavation pit. Coordination of the new tunnel and the old north tunnel continues as the safety fans are installed.
The former OCTO building (the D.C. Office of Computers and Technology) on the garage site has been completely demolished and most of the rubble has been removed from the excavation pit.
Reinforcing steel has been set for the topping slab of the Center Block of the deck and the concrete will be poured next week, leaving only the south block to be poured. The final sections of the roof over the East Concourse will be poured in February and walls inside the concourse are being built to divide the spaces. The CMU (concrete masonry unit) blocks used to build the walls have been made with carbon-capture concrete, further reducing the carbon footprint of the project. Some of you have asked about the deep ditch that runs between 2nd Street and the East Concourse. Once the deck and the East Concourse are complete, that area will be backfilled and a sidewalk will be paved over it.
Utilities are now being installed in the East Concourse and in the lower floors of the building. Pipes, air handlers, and heat exchangers, the utilities that supply the internal climate control to the buildings, arrive daily and are filling the spaces between the ceilings and the floors. Chilled water risers, pipes which send cold water to the Air Handling Units (AHUs) located on each floor, are beginning to be installed. The AHUs blow cold air into each floor to help maintain appropriate temperatures. Other risers send condensed water to the utility penthouse where the cooling towers are located. Ductwork and electrical wires are now visible on several floors, and sprinkler systems are being mocked-up for later installation.. At some point, the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing utilities will all be sealed above the ceilings and in the walls. From then on, they will be accessible only by engineers and building maintenance staff, the unsung heroes of any on-going enterprise.
As I mentioned earlier, the final sections of concrete roof will be poured around February 15, topping off 200 Massachusetts Avenue. Concrete has already been poured on about one-third of the roof slab and the buildings full height is apparent from the north. The views from the top looking south show the Capitol dome and the Library of Congress in the distance. Many of the offices along 2nd Street will share that view. It is even more spectacular than the picture below suggests.
In the construction trades, topping off a building signifies that it has reached its ultimate height. It is not, however, the completion of the building. The penthouses for heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC), and other utilities have yet to be built on the roof, and the interiors are only beginning to take shape. Nonetheless, when 200 Massachusetts Avenue is topped off, the structure will be complete and we will look upon the building’s final height. That is when the celebrations should begin. But because topping off parties are usually planned in advance, and because the project was subject to some weather delays, PGP, BBC, and their engineers and subcontractor celebrated last Friday with a special lunch and raffle, a simple ceremony in comparison to some celebrations in the past.
Topping-off ceremonies have existed for centuries and take many forms. The roots of these ceremonies are steeped in magic and ritual. They conjure up the blessings of the gods as well as the survival of the mortals who built the structure. They also signify new birth and hope. Their origins may be lost in time, but writers for magazines such as Modern Steel Construction, The Ironworker, and others speculate on their origins. I borrow from them and from other sources for this Note.
We know that when the Romans completed the Pons Sublicus across the Tiber River in 621 B.C.E., they threw people into the river as a sacrifice to the water gods for disturbing the river’s flow. The ancient Chinese, perhaps more solicitous of their workers, tried to trick their gods into sending good joss by smearing chicken blood as a substitute for the human life force on the ridge poles of new structures. Some gods were fooled while others, perhaps those of the wind and fire, angrily destroyed the buildings and their scheming crews. Mighty rulers, thinking that they were equal to or stronger than the gods, often challenged the deities when they were unkind. When the river gods destroyed a bridge built by the mighty Persian monarch Xerxes, he ordered the river, and thus the gods, to be punished with 3,000 lashes of a whip. Because of the relationship between building materials, nature gods, and human habitats, trees were often part of ancient topping-off ceremonies. The first known ceremony to use plant branches to top off a structure occurred in Egypt during the Third Dynasty (2700 B.C.E.) when the slaves of King Zoer placed a live plant on the top of the first stone pyramid built at Sakkara. In doing so, they hoped to insure that the eternal life secured for Zoer by his tomb would be shared by the slaves who built it.
There is really no consensus as to the true meaning of topping off a house with a tree. Perhaps to the ancients, it was no more than a celebration that the building reached its ultimate height with no loss of life or injury to the builders. But tree-spirits inhabit the folklore of many peoples and trees have long been a symbol of new birth and hope. We seek safety in our habitats and so perhaps the ancients invoked the protection of their gods, especially the god who lived in or was the tree, to watch over the family that would live in the home. In any case, the practice of placing trees and other shrubs at the building’s top became prominent in the ceremonies throughout Europe. There is some debate about whether the people of Holland, Norway, or Sweden were the first to use fir trees to signal the topping off of their buildings; but by 700 C.E., Scandinavians were regularly placing evergreens on ridge poles to signal the start of construction while Teutonic tribes used them to signal a building’s completion.
The Vikings brought the tradition to Britain where similar ceremonies occurred but with some local flavor, usually the flavor of ale. Given the Vikings propensity for hard living, one has to believe that some form of mind–altering beverage was used in early Nordic ceremonies as well. In time, celebrating the completion of Gothic cathedrals with trees and food began in France and then spread throughout Spain, Italy, and England during the Renaissance. Topping off ceremonies took many forms. Sometimes the Scandinavians placed sheaves of grain on the tree for Odin’s horse. The Germans incorporated speeches and entertainment. Others poured wine at the base of the tree to enchant the gods. Even the practical and cosmopolitan Swiss lay a claim to the fir tree as a topping-off symbol. In Demark alone, some two hundred and thirty versions of topping out ceremonies were documented between the sixteenth- and nineteenth-century.
Today, saplings, flowers, and sheaves of corn continue to adorn European homes to welcome guests or to bring good luck to their owners. We in America bring Christmas trees into our houses and adorn our doors with wreaths to serve a similar purpose, although we seldom consider the source of these rituals. Other of our early rituals came from Mexico, Africa, and Europe. Although the late nineteenth-century European immigration brought many of the construction traditions to the emerging industrial America, Native Americans also lay claim to the tree tradition in topping-off ceremonies. Some believe the people of the Mohawk Nation brought it to the American steel industry. The Mohawk men, seemingly immune to the vertigo of heights, performed much of the steel construction on New York skyscrapers. According to some stories, the Native Americans believed man-made structures should never be taller than the trees. In symbolic appeasement for this breach of the natural order, or to trick the gods like the Chinese of old, they brought a tree to the top of a building when it reached its structural summit. Notwithstanding the importance of the tree, most early twentieth-century photos show an American flag rather than or in addition to a tree in the topping off ceremonies of that era. The flag had probably been hoisted alone or with a tree prior to 1919, but it became standard when steel workers began using it as a patriotic protest against the so-called “American Plan” launched in 1919 to destroy the union movement. Corporate employers had refused to negotiate with unions and advocated union-free shops. Between the rulings of a hostile Supreme Court and the strength of the National Association of Manufacturers, union membership shrank from 5.1 million members to 3.6 million between 1920 and 1929.
Although topping off rituals may have begun with steel structures in America, they are equally welcome in buildings such as those of Capitol Crossing which are built using concrete rather than steel columns. At its ceremony, BBC treated its workers to food (very tasty barbecue), t-shirts, (an evolving American topping off tradition), a tool and prize raffle, and a few speeches. Drinking ale and stronger spirits often accompanied the ceremonies of old and labor strikes were not uncommon when the traditional rum or ale was not to be had. That did not occur here. And although OSHA rules now prohibit the tradition of bringing alcohol to a worksite, I am lobbying for the ancient tradition of placing a tree atop 200 Massachusetts Avenue when it is topped off. To be safe, I intend to bring some spruce branches myself to the final pour.
Topping off ceremonies are rather new to the United States but other rituals are embedded in the construction industry. Some mark the beginning of a project. Abe Polin, the late owner of the Wizards and Capitols and builder of the Verizon Center, always threw a quarter into the foundations of his building. He gave me a quarter to throw into the concrete of the Hotung Building as a measure of hope and his wish for our success. I will have a quarter with me at the final pour of 200 Massachusetts Avenue. The placing of cornerstones also has a long history in the construction industry. Although we tend to ignore them as we move swiftly along our city sidewalks, cornerstones abound. Historically, a cornerstone is the first stone set in a masonry foundation as a reference point to all other stones used to erect a building. Ceremonial cornerstones, some with sacred inscriptions or the names of architects or builders, are part of many religious and guild traditions. Indeed, George Washington and Joseph Clark, the Grand Master of Maryland’s Masonic lodge, laid the cornerstone of the Capitol in a Masonic ritual on September 18, 1793.
Ceremonies to appease the gods have always existed. Perhaps to evoke our own primal memory, many continue in some form today. Indian corn adorns our homes at Thanksgiving and mistletoe and trees complement our Christmases, each harkening back to ceremonies that at one time appeased and celebrated the nature gods or warded off evil spirits. Houses are often blessed by holy men and some are built according to the Eastern principles of feng shui. Indeed, in recognition of Mr. Hotung’s ancestry, we consulted feng shui designers to ensure that his gift to the Law Center would be consistent with the principles of energy or “life breath” associated with this tradition.
American labor practices and the gods of old have both evolved, but trees and flags continue to be part of many American topping-off celebrations. Our celebrations may be much simpler than those of the past, but our wish for good joss and our thankfulness for the absence of fatal injuries on our projects are just as real as those in the past. The past and the present are always intertwined; so it is with Capitol Crossing. This project exists in the present and in the past, in the new and the old. The East End is an old neighborhood with many stories. Some have been told in prior Construction Notes and others will be told in later ones. The buildings that will rise here, however, will set standards for modern construction techniques that tell new stories. They are also being built in an architectural style that speaks to the future rather than the past. But they do so in a city that embodies the old dreams George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Pierre L’Enfant — dreams that persist today. Capitol Crossing reknits the neighborhoods of downtown and the old East End in a city that was brought forward through a grand bargain between citizens of the North and the South, seemingly intractable foes, who could agree on little other than independence from the British. Ours is a neighborhood nurtured by the dreams of the European immigrants who settled this area after a Civil War that nearly tore the nation apart. It is also nurtured by the dreams Asian immigrants who came to the East End at the turn of the century, Hispanic immigrants who came in the last few decades, and African Americans, enslaved and free, who lived here, built this city, fought for their freedom, and then contributed mightily to the economy and the richness of our neighborhood and our American culture. It is the neighborhood on which Paul Dean, Georgetown Law’s first non-cleric dean, bet the Law Center’s future on in 1971, a bet that led to the ultimate revitalization of the East End.
President Obama reminded us recently, however, that all those recent dreams, like the dream of American democracy, are fragile. They are dependent upon the blessings of our gods as well as on the good will of women and men joined in common purpose to make our neighborhoods and our world better places in which to live. I will remember those dreams and the President’s admonition as I throw that quarter into the last pour of concrete and place the spruce branch on the top of 200 Massachusetts Avenue. I hope you remember it too.
Wally Mlyniec
SOURCES
Thanks to Tim Bandel and Wells Turnage for helping me identify the various utilities going into the building.
Kimmel & Associates, The Topping-Out Ceremony: PR on the Roof, February 4, 2016, https://kimmel.com/employers/management/topping-out.html
Matt Levesque, The Traditions Behind Topping Out Ceremonies And Time Capsules, Redlands Daily Facts, 10/12/13, http://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/lifestyle/20131012/the-traditions-behind-topping-out-ceremonies-and-time-capsules
Wallace Mlyniec, Construction Notes, Transforming a Campus in Washington, D.C. (Garrett Park, Md.: On This Spot Productions 2006)
John V. Robinson, The Topping Out Traditions of High-Steel Ironworkers, Western Folklore, Vol. 60. №4 (Autumn 2001)
Mark Vanhoenacker. What Is a Tree Doing on Top of That Construction Site? The Eye
Slate’s design blog, Dec. 19 2013, http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2013/12/19/why_do_construction_workers_top_building_sites_with_undecorated_christmas.html
Peter Wood, Topping Off, National Review on Line, Dec. 23, 2003, https://web.archive.org/web/20080928203019/http://www.nationalreview.com:80/comment/wood200312230101.asp?category=all%20projects&id=23
The Iron Worker, (December 1984)
Modern Steel Construction, (December 2000)
Topping Off, The Carpenter Magazine, Sept/Oct 2001 (Topping Off! at the Wayback Machine [archived 2 June 2006], Carpenter Magazine)
The Mohawks Who Built Manhattan, White Wolf Pack, http://www.whitewolfpack.com/2012/09/the-mohawks-who-built-manhattan-photos.html
Wikipedia, Topping Out, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topping_out
Wikipedia, American Plan (union negotiation), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Plan_(union_negotiations)
