{"id":696,"date":"2011-09-02T17:04:48","date_gmt":"2011-09-02T21:04:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thequicksliver.wordpress.com\/?p=696"},"modified":"2011-09-02T17:04:48","modified_gmt":"2011-09-02T21:04:48","slug":"9-2-11-slamming-mohawk-iron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/9-2-11-slamming-mohawk-iron\/","title":{"rendered":"9.2.11 Slamming Mohawk Iron"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/a>As the new World Trade Center rises in lower Manhattan, one group of workers has a special interest in the project.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a>In 1886, a steel bridge was built across St. Lawrence River in Quebec.\u00a0 The site of the bridge happened to be adjacent to a Mohawk reservation. \u00a0Many natives went to the site looking for jobs, and were hired to do the extraordinarily dangerous iron work.\u00a0 They soon proved to be very good at “slamming iron.”\u00a0 Foreman were impressed by their reliability, the quality of their work, and their courage.\u00a0 They could walk the iron beams like fearless trapeze artists, needing no safety nets or harnesses.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a>When a second bridge was built nearby in 1907, Mohawks were specifically chosen to work on it.\u00a0 Of the 75 iron workers hired onto the project, 33 were Mohawks.\u00a0 Unfortunately a flaw in the design of the bridge caused it to collapse during construction, and all those workers were tragically killed.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a>In order to prevent such mass-casualties from ever happening again, Mohawk workers dispersed from the reservation to job sites across the Northeast and to New York City in particular.\u00a0 Starting in 1916, when they built the Hell Gate Bridge on the East River, the Mohawks have helped build every major structure in the city.\u00a0 They built the George Washington and Verrazano Narrows bridges, the Empire State Building, the United Nations and Madison Square Garden.\u00a0 You may be familiar with the famous photograph of 11 iron-workers sitting on a beam during their lunch-break while building Rockefeller Center; look closely and you’ll see that 3 of them are Mohawks.\u00a0 And yes, when the tragedy of 9\/11 occurred, much of what came crashing down was Mohawk iron.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a>So when work began on the new World Trade Center, the Mohawks signed on. \u00a0One of the two iron teams on the project is a Mohawk crew; some worked on the original Trade Center and some had fathers and grandfathers who did so.\u00a0 So they have a special interest in replacing something they built which was lost.\u00a0 They have battled against rain and snow and even Hurricane Irene to raise the building quickly.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a>The goal is to reach 1000 feet high before the 10th anniversary of 9\/11.\u00a0 That day will be a Sunday, and most of the workers will commemorate the day at home with their families on the reservation.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a>But on the morning of Monday, September 12, the Mohawk iron workers will be back on the job, walking the beams and slamming iron.\u00a0 They’ve got a lot of hard work ahead:\u00a0 the new World Trade Center will stand at 1776 feet, and will be the tallest building in the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the new World Trade Center rises in lower Manhattan, one group of workers has a special interest in the project. In 1886, a steel bridge was built across St. Lawrence River in Quebec.\u00a0 The site of the bridge happened to be adjacent to a Mohawk reservation. \u00a0Many natives went…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[627,776,828,1046,1294,1318,1366],"class_list":["post-696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-6","tag-iron-workers","tag-madison-square-garden","tag-mohawk","tag-rockefeller-center","tag-verrazano","tag-washington-bridge","tag-world-trade-center"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}