Two men climbed the 52-story New York Times Building in Times Square on Thursday, a few hours apart from one another. They were both militating for a cause.

Alain Robert, an experienced stuntman known as The French Spiderman, was the first to climb the building and unfurl a banner that read "Global warming kills more people than a 9/11 every week." He was arrested when he got to the top.

A few hours later, the second man, a New Yorker who declared he wanted raise awareness of the dangers of malaria, climbed the Eighth Avenue side of the building starting about 6 p.m. Renaldo Clarke, 32, was watched by thousands of onlookers and TV cameras and was eventually also taken into custody. As police officers thought he was an emotionally disturbed copycat, they took him to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.

Before reaching the building’s top, Clarke started showing signs of fatigue, and officers awaiting him on the roof encouraged him and even threw him a rope, which he refused to take.

The two men found it easy to perform their stunts as the building is covered with ceramic slats that allowed them to climb the wall like a ladder.

Robert has already climbed more than 70 skyscrapers all across the globe and said he was arrested 14 times so far. He was last arrested in February, after climbing a 42-floor building in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The two men were both charged with reckless endangerment, criminal trespass and disorderly conduct, police said.

"Their illegal and ill-considered actions jeopardized their safety and the safety of others," said in a statement Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for the Times.

Mathis also said the newspaper was taking measures to prevent future occurrences of this kind from happening.