Odessa College and MW Builders will hold a celebration of the completion of the framing process with a ceremonial signing and lifting of the last beam with the topping tree to complete the frame of the new Wood Health Sciences Building at 10 a.m. Thursday.
Odessa College employees will join OC administrators, members of the OC board of trustees, and Wood Health Sciences Building donors to write messages on the beam before it is lifted and placed in its final position, a news release said.
Attendees will gather in the parking lot on the north side of the Wood Health Sciences Building.
A topping out ceremony is a builders’ tradition held when the last beam is placed atop a structure during the construction process. The practice of “topping out” a new building can be traced to the ancient Scandinavian practice placing a pine tree atop a new building. After the needles had fallen off the tree, the builders knew the wood frame below had cured/dried out so they could enclose the building, the release said.
Another historical belief is that Native Americans believed that no structure could be taller than the trees, so placing a tree in the final and highest beam addressed the issue.
