Topping Out

The other night I went to a wedding of some friends of my girlfriend. They had a lovely ceremony at a chapel at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN (A sister college of Minneapolis College of Art and Design, where they'd met).

After the ceremony, we went to their reception at the Embassy Suites in St. Paul. It was a decent reception, good meal, et cetera, et cetera.

None of that is really the reason for this post. Instead, I want to talk about something I wasn't aware of before I went to that reception. Something I saw when I went outside for a cigarette struck me as odd.

It wasn't this Oscar Meyer Wiener Mobile:



Nor was it this Crane across the highway:



It was the tree you can see in that last image:




It struck me as odd, so I mentioned it when I went back inside. I was told that this is something that happens on a lot of buildings under construction.

The fact that there was some kind of trivial knowledge I didn't already have also struck me as odd, so I went searching.

Apparently this is an extremely old practice, according to this article by John V. Robinson. There are a couple of small Wikipedia articles as well, Topping Out, and Topping Off.

It's interesting that this is one of those long time traditions that no one really understands. It's funny how things like this happen, where you can actually ask someone why they're doing it, and they'll just shrug and tell you, "we've always done it."

Whatever the reason, it's an interesting tidbit that now occupies a part of my brain meats.