A Building Goes Up: The Making of a Skyscraper

James A. Love is a professor of architecture in the Faculty of
Environmental Design and an adjunct professor of mechanical engineering
at the University of Calgary. His latest publication (in press) is the
Illuminating Engineering Society’s Recommended

The Ontario Workman’s Compensation Board Building is a tower near the
Toronto harbor. In A Building Goes Up, Mary Gooderham, a science writer
with The Globe and Mail, chronicles its construction from the
developer’s concept to occupancy.

The book is synthesized from a collection of weekly columns Gooderham
wrote over the life of the project. She transforms the story from a dry
technical account into an engaging tale by interweaving the details of
building with the stories of the builders and their families, including
architects, engineers, construction managers, crane operators, and
ceiling installers. The project involved hundreds of people who toiled
subject to the vagaries of nature and the hazards of the construction
site. (For example, the five Patullo brothers, of humble Italian
origins, operated as a team with many workers from their home town to
fulfil the forming subcontract for the concrete superstructure.) During
the construction of the skyscraper, she points out, there were few
technical slips and those were minor. In the book, she explains the
fabrication of the many systems that make up a modern building.

Readers from the sidewalk superintendent to the student of building
should find this book helpful in the way it knits together diverse
perspectives. It must be the only book on construction that includes
recipes (some of the dishes served at the potluck Christmas party).