Jun 5, 2008 12:24 pm US/Eastern
Man Scales 52-Story New York Times Building
'French Spiderman' Says He Has Scaled 70 Skyscrapers In 8 Years
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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theNew York Times building, designed by architect Renzo Piano
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A French skyscraper climber nicknamed "Spiderman" scaled The New York Times' 52-story tower Thursday, unfurling a banner calling attention to global warming before police arrested him at the top.
Alain Robert climbed the slats covering the midtown Manhattan building's facade to hang the banner, which read, "Global warming kills more people than a 9/11 every week."
Hundreds of bystanders craned their necks to watch the stunt. Workers cheered from a construction site across the street, and Robert pumped his fist.
Charges against the 45-year-old Robert were pending, a police spokesman said.
A spokeswoman for the Times, Catherine Mathis, said no one at the newspaper knew of Robert's plan in advance.
The new tower, designed by Renzo Piano, is "a very green building," Mathis said. "We wanted to minimize our environmental footprint." She said the ceramic slats, which Robert climbed like a ladder, save energy by reducing the amount of heat and light entering the building.
Robert's Web site says he has climbed more than 70 skyscrapers around the world. He was arrested in February after climbing a 42-floor building in Sao Paolo, Brazil.
Robert said in a news release he was climbing to mark World Environment Day and "to create support for far greater and urgent action from world leaders on global warming."
His Web site says he climbs even though he suffers from vertigo and is "60 percent disabled" from previous accidents. It also says he has been jailed many times but it does not matter because he "would rather stay in a prison than in a hospital."
One city councilman is hoping that Robert gets to know what the inside of a New York City jail looks like.
"Regardless of the cause, in this day and age the police department has more important things to worry about then ridiculous stunts like this that endanger the police and public," said Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. "If he wants to climb something, he can climb the walls inside his jail cell at Rikers."
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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