SKINNER AT THE INTERNATIONAL - Many were The Homeless of the Fifties

	This is the Ramsey County Courthouse on Kellogg Blvrd. Lower Loop next to the river. The front was 16 stories and the back dropped down to the river level and was 18 floors. Terrible to work on. The windows opened in the center so you had to stand on the inside and lean out to wash them. The belt hooks fastened on the inside of the window. The window sill was a wide marble ledge three or four feet off the floor. VERY slippery when we dripped water and TSP on it. I always felt as if I were falling out the window as I leaned out to clean it.
	NP Bldng. Northern Pacific Railroad. I worked this building more then any others . We cleaned the windows once a month. It was a great job. We could work the shady side in the morning and the shady side in the afternoon. The Walkway shown was not there in the fifties. This picture is taken from the west. The walkway is on the north side. This was actually two buildings. The NP railroad had the half on the closest end, while the Great Northern Railroad had the other half. I only worked on the NP side. You can see a slightly different coloring about half way across the building which marks the line between GN and NP.
	The Lowry Hotel (The Subway wasn't there in the 50's.) They had a great old time coffee shop and Ice Cream Lunch Counter where Joe and I would take our coffee breaks while the others went to a 3.2 beer joint down the street. I would knock timidly on the door of a room to see if it was occupied and ask for permission to come in and clean the window. If they said "Come back later" I would say okay, while Joe would say, "Please Mister, I need to clean the window now, it will only take un momento." He was always so cheerful and smiling that they would always agree that there was no need to comeback later. "See Mister Del, you just ask them and they will invite you right in." Well, it worked for him, but hey, I was a 17 year old kid, they wouldn't listen to me. Would they? On the left side is the Lowry Medical Arts Bldng. You can't see it there, but it comes up later.
	And here it is. The Lowry Medical Arts Building. To the right is the Lowry Hotel. The Walkway was not there in the fifties. On the left side, where the two windows are side by side all the way down is where we took some pictures. Joe would go down one floor from the top and crawl out the window nearest the street and get hooked up. I would climb out the window one floor above and turn around in my safety belt facing the street and shoot a picture of Joe. He would then do the same thing but was so nervous he cut off my legs. It was a scary feeling being backwards in the safety belt and leaning far out over the window ledge. I don't blame him for being nervous. We have a similar picture from the 8th or 10th floor of the NP building, (the one on the book logo at the top of page) only Joe was so nervous he shook the camera and got a head and shoulders shot. It was in the Lowry Medical Arts Building where Joe was telling a nurse that I was going to be a radio announcer. When I crawled in the window, he said, C'mom Mister Del, announce for the pretty lady!" I could have crawled through the floor I was so embarrassed. Joe was rather uninhibited to say the least, but the "pretty lady" thought it was quite nice how I could "announce."
	The Empire Bank. How could we ever forget the place where I fell from the sixth floor? I was working the back side over the alley. It wasn't fancy like the front. Just plain bricks with wooden framed windows. Rusty bolts sticking out with big nuts and washers on the inside. The bolts on some these old buildings would on occasion pull right out through the old wood, and one of the guys would take off the rusty old nut, find a bigger washer to put on so it couldn't slip through the wall and we would be back in business. All I could think of when I fell was, "Will the bolt hold? And of course IT DID! (See Chapter Page Six in the book for the story)
	The Exchange Building. I worked this one occasionally but not often. Rather unexceptional. Just an old building with lots of folderol decorative wood around the windows and doors. Most of the guys complained if they had to go there. Desks, files, cupboards and anything else they could think of blocking the windows. Because of the way it was built you could only do crossovers on the two windows that were close together, and then you had to lift the heavy old windows, crawl in and struggle to open the next one. No wonder they had a chiropractor on retainer. He was also the trainer of the Golden Gopher Hockey team. He would say, "Lay down on your stomach and would then reach into the steam cabinet with a pair of long metal tongs and get a steaming hot towel, which he then slapped on your back. This would automatically raise you a foot off the table. He would laugh and comment on how good heat was to calm aching muscles. I suppose it had another effect too. Once you had been there your back would have to hurt pretty bad before you wanted to go back.
	Merchants Bank. I only worked this one a few times.
	The Minnesota Building. I thought at first this was the old Minnesota Mutual Building where I did the chin ups off the 11th floor fire escape (see Chapter Seven Page 22 for the chin up story), but I e-mailed a few times back and forth with their PR department and they sent pictures of the only buildings they knew about and none of them looked like the old Mewtch. So this isn't it. This was an office building that National Expert did, but I don't think I ever worked it. I haven't been able to find a picture of the old Minnesota Mutual. It was on the Northwest corner of the downtown area and had a good view of the Capitol from the 11th floor.
	Northwest Bell Telephone. From this view you can see where we could cross over a couple of windows, but would then have to go back inside to reach the next window. The windows were heavy metal with "Fire Glass" in them. The fire glass had heavy wire, like chicken netting, embedded in the glass so in case of fire it wouldn't shatter. These were very heavy windows and the sills and frames were also made of metal. In winter we would put alcohol in the water to keep it from freezing on the window, but when it hit the cold metal window sill it would freeze on the spot. We were very careful to drip as little as possible because if you spilled too much it would turn the window sill into a miniature skating rink. Very slippery. Very dangerous. More then one guy ended up hanging a couple of feet below the window, with both ends of his belt hooked, but unable to stand on the sill. Great job in the summer though. on the back side, the windows were all in a row and you could do crossovers all the way down the back side. 3 or 4 floors had all of the central dialing equipment in them. We couldn't hear ourselves think. There were thousands of little "cans," round and about 6 or 8 inches high. Little rotary switches would spin each time someone put a finger in the hole on a telephone dial and dialed a number. The switches made a sharp metallic click over each of the steps in the number dialed. With thousands of these switches going all at the same time it was one noisy place. They also did their sales training on the 7th or 8th floor. One day I stepped out a window, cleaned it and did a cross over. As I worked on the second window I heard a woman scream "Where is he?" They threw open the window, sure I had fallen. I don't know if they were disappointed or mad when they saw me calmly working on the next window. (See Chapter 15, page 47 for a story about Ooftuh the Norwegian and how I was stuck in the sun on the 8th floor of the Northwest Telephone Company building)
	In the spring and fall we were called on to do the storms and screens on these old mansions through the Summit District. We all hated it. These windows are HEAVY! And the ladders were tall! Those third floor windows were hard to reach and after we got the storm window up to the top, we would discover they were "mislabeled" and we would have to haul it down and figure out which one was supposed to go up there. Well, it was a job. (See Chapter 25 Page 67 for a story about Mexican Joe and how crew members did extra work to get money for his daughters First Communion Dress)
	The St. Paul Athletic Club. This was almost the same as the Minneapolis Athletic Club.
	The St. Paul Building. In it's day the "in" address for a business. We did this one a couple of times a year. Nothing remarkable about it. Just an old building
	The Great Northern from another angle. You can see where the GN ends and the NP begins.
	This is an old hotel on St. Peter and Fifth. I can't remember if this was the St. Paul Hotel or not. I may have worked this one, but I just don't remember
St, Paul Minnesota buildings we cleaned in the early to mid fifties. If you get into downtown St. Paul go first to the courthouse on Kellogg Boulevard. This is at the south end of downtown next to the river. Directly North across the street you should find the Lowry Hotel and Lowry Medical Arts Buildings if they are still there. Then go North on Robert Street. If the Empire Bank Building is still around it should be about three blocks up on the right (east) side of the street.	The NP building should be a block or so east of Robert on 3rd-4th-5th, somewhere right in there. The courthouse, the Lowry buildings, and the NP building were the ones I worked most. The Minnesota Mutual building where I did the chin ups is somewhere over on the Northwest corner of the downtown area. According to the PR department at Minnesota Mutual Insurance, they have had a couple of new buildings since then and they had no knowledge of the old one. In the 1970's when Minneapolis tore out an entire 20 square block area of downtown for Urban Renewal, the St. Paul preservation people made a major effort to save as many of the old buildings as they could. That's why so many are still there. GREAT JOB Preservation people! Contents