‘SPIDER DAN’ VS. THE SEARS TOWER
Stuntman’s climb up skyscraper won the heart of Chicagoans
One onlooker was hungover and didn’t have anything better to do. Another cruised over on roller skates to see what all the fuss was about. What they saw in the Loop that Memorial Day in 1981 was a 25-year-old man in a custommade Spider-Man suit climbing the Sears Tower.
His name was Daniel Goodwin. But after that historic climb up 110 stories, he forever would be known as “Spider Dan,” the first person to scale what was then the world’s tallest building.
“It was a snap for him — almost like walking up stairs,” Chicago Patrolman Jack Rimkus told the Tribune at the time. “He’s a real nice kid, and this is just something he had to do.”
Word seemed to travel quickly on May 25 that something was afoot at the Sears Tower. At least 200 people showed up to watch Goodwin, clad in a blue-and-orange suit, scale the west side of the building using suction cups and a “home-welded claw,” the Tribune reported.
“We’re just nursing a hangover. We didn’t have anything else to do,” said Norm Pennington, who came down from the Northwest Side with his girlfriend to witness the derring-do.
“I don’t think he’s crazy at all,” said Tim Creech, who “rolled on down” on his skates.
Goodwin, a self-described “actor-acrobat” from Las Vegas, said he spent months on the stunt. He scouted the Sears Tower for at least six weeks and spent $450 on his suit and mask.
But he didn’t do it alone. Goodwin’s partner in crime that day was Lakeview resident James Hackett, who as the “ladder man” helped the adventurer get started at 3 in the morning.
By 6 a.m. Goodwin was at the 26th floor. Security guards who went outside to raise the flag for the skyscraper were the first to notice him.
“It was fruitless to try to stop him,” said Jack Sterling, a deputy district fire chief. “He could move so freely. For the safety of everybody, I decided to let him keep going.”
Chicago fire officials may have allowed Goodwin to keep climbing, but not without striking a deal with the Maine native. At the 55th floor, with firefighters following him in a window-washing scaffold, Goodwin consented to wear a lifeline. The scaffold would be placed beneath him as a kind of safety net.
“It was the expedient thing to do,” Sterling said. “I was afraid he’d use up his energy trying to avoid us.”
Goodwin finished a little before 10:30 a.m. — and, with Hackett, was promptly taken into police custody.
They were charged with disorderly conduct and bonded out the next day, with Goodwin walking out of the downtown jail still in his superhero suit. Hours later, Goodwin was holding court and dining on trout at the Ambassador East Hotel in the Pump Room’s famed Booth One.
“I’ve done a lot of daring things before,” he said in regaling the crowd. “I’ve sort of mastered fear.”
He discouraged copycats. “I don’t want people to think it was something anyone can do,” Goodwin said. “Each (suction) cup that I put on was sliding. I had about 10 seconds on each cup.”
Spider Dan’s Sears Tower saga ended two weeks later when he and Hackett appeared in court. Goodwin pleaded guilty and was fined $35. Hackett had his charge dismissed. Goodwin wasn’t the only climber to take on the Sears Tower. On Aug. 20, 1999, French mountaineer Alain Robert, 37, provided a spectacle for the morning rush hour. Robert climbed the tower in just over an hour and was promptly arrested.
Spider Dan wasn’t done with Chicago. His next move came five months after his Sears Tower affair — this time, with a little more controversy.
Goodwin trained his sights on the John Hancock Center, but he was foiled initially. His first try, on Nov. 1, 1981, failed because he couldn’t get secure footing on the cross braces that form the building’s iconic diamond pattern. Like a scene out of a slapstick film, a firetruck extended its ladder to retrieve Goodwin but smashed into the window next to him, leaving Goodwin dangling by a suction cup. Spider Dan made it only to the second floor.
But Goodwin had better luck on Nov. 11.
It took him six hours to scale the 100-story building, but not without firefighters and city officials running interference.
Goodwin started climbing the 1,127-foot “Big John” around 7 a.m. in the 40-degree sun, clad in a wet suit, webbed boots and gloves and affixing mountain climbing devices to the building’s I-girders.
Police and firefighters arrived a few minutes after Goodwin started climbing, and they immediately put up resistance.
“A window-washing scaffold was lowered to block his ascent at the 20th floor,” the Tribune reported. “Firefighters then removed ... several windows and sprayed water on Goodwin.”
“I looked up, and a big gush of water hit me in the face,” Goodwin said in court the next day. “It practically knocked me off the side of the building.”
Thousands of people watched as firefighters tried the hoses on Spider Dan and then blocked his climb for about two hours at the 37th floor using pike poles.
The crowd chanted: “Let him climb!”
Fire Commissioner William Blair authorized the use of hoses “because I’m afraid if we let him go, then tomorrow, some kid — your son — will try this, and he’s going to fall to his death, and who’s going to be blamed? The
“I’ve done a lot of daring things before. I’ve sort of mastered fear.” — Daniel Goodwin
Fire Department?”
Mayor Jane Byrne and police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek — who was angry at being called in on his day off — stepped in to resolve the situation.
Brzeczek leaned out a 37th floor window, with police officers and firefighters holding on to his legs, and read Goodwin the injunction the court issued after his first undertaking at the Hancock, which barred him from other attempts.
Later, Byrne leaned out a window and told Goodwin he could keep going — but at his own risk. They came to an agreement: Goodwin would ask for help if he needed it. Spider Dan was given new gloves, warmer clothes and an electronic device he could use to request assistance.
Goodwin reached the top around 1 p.m. after climbing for four hours (and clinging for two).
He was quickly slapped with charges: criminal trespassing and performing an aerial act without the use of safety equipment.
When Goodwin appeared in court, a judge found him in contempt for defying a court order. He was held in lieu of $100,000 bail, but friends put up assets to get him released. At court a week later, a judge placed him on probation for a year and ordered him to avoid “public stunts.”
For its part, the Fire Department faced fallout over its aggressive tactics, especially among its own. One fire official told the Tribune: “What we did was bush league and we are ashamed.”
A higher-ranking fire official concurred: “When the order came for the water, one boss said, ‘What the hell are they trying to do to this guy, kill him?’ ... In terms of our image, that order set us back 50 years.”