SEATTLE -- Millions from around the world come to visit the Space Needle every year. But most don't know how the city's most iconic structure came to be. Until now.
"We realized the Space Needle didn't tell its own story, at the Space Needle," said Knute "Skip" Berger, one of the minds behind the making of "Building a Marvel", a new exhibition on the Space Needle's pavilion level ramp.
"We have about 10 panels. And on those panels, you'll see a sequence that takes you all the way from groundbreaking through the opening of the fair," Berger stated.
Each panel offers a unique perspective of the needle's constructions. But it’s one man's photos that really bring the exhibit alive.
"A man named George Gulacsik documented the building of the Space Needle every step of the way. He came every few days with his Leica camera and took photographs," said Berger. "One of the dimensions the Gulacsik collection added was he took a lot of photos of the workers,” Berger said. "You see guys that look like the Marlboro man."
One of those men Gulacsick captured on film was a 29-year-old ironworker, Jack Edwards, who helped build the needle over 5 decades ago.
"I was what they call a connector. They are the people that do the assembly that climbs around," said Edwards.
Men like Jack worked long hours at dizzying heights. But despite the danger, many men preferred not to wear safety lines while working.
"There were protections from L&I and also union rules, but we resisted any of these safety things because they made the work harder, and was inconvenient, and we always thought that our safety lay in our mobility,” Edwards said. “So if we were going to get struck by something or smashed by something we wanted to be able to get out of the way.”
The Space Needle was completed in just 13 months. Amazingly, this was done without any major incidents to the workers.
"We worked all the way through this job without a fatality or without a serious accident," said Edwards.
The Space Needle hopes the "Building a Marvel" installation will not just inform, but also honor the people who had a hand in making it happen.
"It's a very optimistic vision of the future. So I hope it embodies the spirit of the people who constructed it," said Berger.
