Culture

A Brief History of People Trying to Be Spider-Man

A 19-year-old scaled NYC’s Trump Tower Wednesday. The outlaw grandfathers of “buildering” would not be impressed.
Julie Jacobson/AP

The Gspaltenhorn was never enough for Geoffrey Winthrop Young.

That was one of the many mighty Alpine peaks that Young, a notorious mountaineer, conquered during his lifetime. But he always wanted more. Eventually, he turned his sport toward the next-best thing: the structures around him at Cambridge University.