EXPLOITS OF A STEEPLEJACK.

Northern Advocate, 16 February 1912, Page 2

EXPLOITS OF A STEEPLEJACK.

PERILOUS GYMNASTICS

At a height of 710 ft "Bob" Merrill, the wdrld's most famous steeplejack, has just completed his record task of regilding the top of the Metropolitan Tower, the loftiest of New York's skyscrapers. Several thousand people blocked the traffic on Twenty-third-street, watching Merrill climb about the exterior of the tower, looking like a fly.

The top of the tower consists of a gigantic octagonal lantern, and Merrill had to g;ld the outside of the lantern, clinging to it with one hand, and plying his brush with the other. Surmounting tlio lantern is a flagstaff, and, in repainting it, Merrill called in two of his assistants, who gave a free perforamnce to the in the street below 'vhich no circus ever has shown. One of the assistants mounted the shouldei's of the ether, and Merill clambered on the shoulders of the second man, from which position he was able to reach the top of the flagstaff and cleanse it.

The display of gymnastics was adopted as a new steeplejack method in place of the old system of climbing up the pole. Merrill is famous for tricks of this kind. A few weeks before, while painting the flagstaff of New York's City Hall, Merrill took his six-year-old yon aloft with him, and swung him back and forth over the heads of the flightened people in the City Hall Park. His ability to perform athletic feats in the air is not surpassed by the best of professional performers. Merrill was formerly a sailor in the United States navy and in the merchant marine. His services are as much in demand in Europe as in America. The two largest contracts hi ever had wer* for finishing the Eiffel Tower just before the Paris Exposition, and cleaning the 2000 turrets and statues of the Milan Cathedral. The latter job took him three years to complete.