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There’s more to ironworking than laying girders for skyscrapers — as respectable as that is — even in a city known for them.

In the case of Adriana Lopez-Marin, assistant training director for Chicago Ironworkers Local 63, she became a success story as an architectural and ornamental ironworker. This, from a unique apprenticeship program that attracts trainees from across the United States and abroad. It’s all part of Local 63’s Architectural Metal Trainee School.

The school, located in Local 63’s nifty new appropriately curtain wall constructed “The House of Glass” in Broadview Il, just outside the Windy City, hosts trainees from across the U.S. Midwest and Canada. The only other ornamental ironworker program is at Local 580 in New York City.

Lopez-Marin, 39, from a lower income Mexican immigrant family, advanced quickly through the apprenticeship and professional learning curve, serving as a foreman for a major glass contractor, obtaining a City of Chicago crane license, then becoming a certified welding inspector, and on to her present role as a union training director. The local’s apprentice co-ordinator Jason Butz calls her a “trailblazer” achieving “remarkable success as a minority woman in a predominantly male industry.”

Ornamental ironworkers are the “finishers,” those installing the fancy work like glass handrails, stainless steel, metal, window systems, monumental stairs, “all these extravagant entranceways you see on (Chicago’s) Michigan Avenue,” Butz said.

As an apprentice Lopez-Martin would have got training in both curtain and window wall construction,  how to set window systems, caulking, rigging, crane operation. Her training lasted three years though the program is now four.

For the local, which has been around for decades, these apprenticeships are nothing new. But the new “state-of-the-art” two-storey building is designed to elevate training with varying types of glass systems, a testing chamber where curtain walls can be tested for leaks and to ensure correct installation.

“This is to ensure the apprentices are laying out the systems correctly, installing and sealing them properly, and then testing,” Butz said.

So, there are structures wrapped with different systems like storefronts, revolving and automatic doors, curtain and window walls – “all different types of systems that we’re continuously putting up and taking down in the training center,” he said.

The training field is growing to meet market demands.

“We always want to make sure we’re relevant. There’s a lot of competition with non-union,” Butz said.

One of Local 63’s more recent goals is to assist minorities to choose the program.

“Adriana was such a rock star that it opened the doors for more women and it’s had a snowball effect,” he said. “It’s been fantastic.”

Her crane license might be misinterpreted by those not directly in this niche. This is not operating heavy cranes but light Valla cranes to set window systems. It’s a walk-in-behind forklift with a boom. She also became a certified welding inspector accredited through the American Welding Society.

“That’s really important for the training,” Butz said. “So that means we can have our members weld here and get certified to weld in the City of Chicago.”

The school keeps up with market trends, such as solar installation and mass timber, the latter supported by a mockup at the center.

“We are always trying to innovate and ensure we are abreast of current trends,” he said.