If you’ve driven on the Eisenhower Expressway near 25th and Broadview recently you likely noticed the massive red IW 63 sign on a large black building. The new facility is the future home of the Ironworkers (IW) Local 63 Training School’s “newest curtainwall and window wall training center,” US Glass Magazine reported last year.

The publication added: “IW 63 officials say the center will focus exclusively on training for curtainwalls, metal panel installations, storefronts, cranes and window walls.

The new facility is an expansion of the current campus, which trains members to erect unitized curtainwall systems, steel stairs and guardrails, ornamental and temporary fences, monuments and statues, as well as miscellaneous metals and glass handrails. IW 63 is located in Westchester, Ill.”

Paul Wende, IW 63’s business manager, told the publication that the union “wanted to design a ‘statement piece’ of who the organization is and what it’s about.

“We’re going to make the new facility a ‘glass house,’” Wende said. “We’re going to be doing all our glass training in the building, separating it from the other building and leaving it for the iron, burning, welding and all the good stuff. We haven’t spent as much money as we would have liked on glass training, now we’re rectifying that.”

Continue reading on vfpress.news.