I had been admiring The Wellington for years. The way it loomed over State Street in ominous and crumbling beauty left me breathless more than once. I wasn’t the only person with a deep love and curiosity about the building; I often met people who were eager to tell their stories or share rumors and theories.
“On the wall in a sub-basement,” one friend recalled, “there is a suicide note written in Chinese.”
Suicides, weddings, murders, births; the Wellington had seen it all. So when Chris invited me to climb to the top with him on New Years Eve, you can imagine how my heart raced.
Seeing it from the sidewalk, even with its impressive stature and a shadow that consumed a two-block radius, didn’t prepare us for the baffling amount of stairs. Our legs turned to jelly from the climb, and our lungs burned fiercly from the icy air, dust, and asbestos.
After every few flights we’d stop, finding it harder and harder to catch our breath. Each new floor broke us into manic laughter as we realized, again, that there were even more flights to climb. Until there weren’t.
The sky was clear and starry as we pushed through the emergency exit door to the rooftop, with a rusty creak that harshly pierced the wintery hush of the city. The brightness and fresh air were startling for a moment.
We stood on the edge of the building, squinting at the people below who were gathered like ants to see the fireworks usher us into a new year.
“Ten...nine...eight...seven...six...five...four...three...two...one...”
And with warm hearts and frost-bitten hands, we watched the sky explode.
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