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Ralph Modjeski, considered "America's greatest bridge builder", was born in Bochnia, near the city of Krakow, Poland on January 27, 1861. He immigrated to America at the age of 15 with his mother, famous Shakespearean actress, Helen Modjeska, in July, 1876. Even though Modjeski seemed destined to become an accomplished concert pianist, he went on instead to become a highly successful civil engineer and "one of the twentieth century's most famous designers and builders of bridges". In 1929, Modjeski was awarded the John Fritz Gold Medal, the highest American engineering medal, with a citation for his genius in combining strength and beauty. He was also honored by the Pennsylvania state legislature in 1966 by a resolution citing him as one of America's "greatest inventors".

Take a virtual walk across the Mid-Hudson Bridge!! Discover various facts about the bridge. Find out about attractions in the area of the Mid-Hudson Bridge. Learn about how the bridge was conceived, designed, and built.

A gift of John F. Harbeson, the archive consists of Cret's student and professional work and is displayed on approximately four hundred and seventy-six sheets containing one or more drawings, photos, or prints per sheet. The archival holdings may be broadly divided into eighty-eight sheets of student work at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Lyon and Paris, fifty-three student and professional watercolors, thirteen sheets of bookplates, seals, medals and title pages, fifty-six sheets of competitions (thirty-two of various university designs), nine sheets of commercial work, one hundred and two of memorials, twenty-two sheets of government buildings, twelve residential designs, twenty-one sheets of bridge designs, five sheets of watercolors and ink sketches by Col. Oscar Lahalle (Cret's father-in-law), and one hundred and eleven sheets of varied design work.

One of the most interesting papers presented to the American Society of Engineers at the Seabright Convention is that of Mr. THEODORE COOPER on "American Railway Bridges." It is interesting from the historical matter contained in it, and here first systematically gathered together, and valuable as showing the progress of a branch of engineering that has made our country famous for its works of this nature. The paper is necessarily long, so that we cannot publish it in full, even did the rules of the society permit, and we must content ourselves with the following abstract. We congratulate Mr. COOPER upon the success attending his efforts to unearth and arrange much matter relating to the early history of wooden bridge building that has usually been considered inaccessible.

A newspaper, the Lansing Republican, dated February 5, 1884, reprinted a story from the Grand Traverse Herald pointing out that the experiment to provide all-year service across the Straits by boat had failed, and that if a great east-west route were ever to be established through Michigan a bridge or tunnel would be required. The editor considered both as practicable; the only question in his mind was that of cost.

Welcome to the online edition of Bridging the Bay: Bridging the Campus.

...At a time when the Bay Area’s bridges are being analyzed and new structures are being planned, it is important to recognize the diversity and depth of the research collections that exist on the Berkeley campus. The exhibit includes books, documents, architectural drawings and renderings, blueprints, artifacts, maps, and photographs. The bridges documented include the Golden Gate Bridge, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, the Carquinez Bridge, the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, the Antioch Bridge, and the Dumbarton Bridge. The exhibit also contains documents detailing Bay Area bridge projects that were seriously considered, but were never built.

Cret’s plan shows that he had learned to manipulate the École’s graphic conventions and to put a program “in order” (see Fig. 13). The contrast between the mosaique, the tapestry of broken lines that represent decorative floor and ceiling patterns, and the poché, the more heavily inked lines that indicate structure, make clear that the arrangement is a linear succession of volumes, with two relatively narrow rooms bracketing the more ample one at the center. The heavy unbroken outline of the main space underscores the lack of windows and reliance on top lighting, and thus its use for paintings and works on paper. The mosaique is more than decoration; it visually interweaves the volumes and defines a broad axial promenade, or path of movement, from the entrance to what is presumably the sidelit sculpture gallery that opens to a cascade of stairs leading down to the garden of fragments. All the pieces of a good Beaux-Arts plan are here: the clear proportions of the independent volumes, the axial disposition of openings, the warp and weft of the details, and the telling use of the graphic conventions of poché and mosaique so the design appears at once simpler than the sum of its parts and more ample than one might expect of a small museum

A self-made man and one of America’s greatest engineers, James Buchanan Eads led a life inextricably intertwined with the nation’s most important waterway, the Mississippi River. He explored the river bottom in a diving bell of his own design; made a fortune salvaging wrecks; in the 1870s built the world's first steel bridge over the Mississippi at St. Louis; then deepened the river at its mouth, turning New Orleans into the second largest port in the nation. By the time of his death in 1887, Eads was widely acknowledged to be one of the most influential men of his day.

In 1885, Gustav Lindenthal, a bridge engineer who established his reputation on two notable Pittsburgh spans, was approached by officials at the Pennsylvania Railroad regarding the feasibility of a railroad crossing across the Hudson River. At that time, the Pennsylvania Railroad was at a disadvantage vis-à-vis its chief competitor, the New York Central Railroad, because it did not have a direct entrance into Manhattan.

Because of the smoke that emanated from the locomotives of the era, the railroad favored a bridge across the Hudson rather than a tunnel. After giving serious thought to a cantilever design, Lindenthal decided upon a suspension bridge because such a design would allow wider distances between piers. However, the suspension bridge would have to have a main span of about 3,000 feet, nearly twice the length of the main span of the Brooklyn Bridge completed two years earlier.

Abraham Darby (the Grandfather of the famous bridge builder) was born in 1678 at Wrens Nest in the hamlet of Woodsetton in the Parish of Sedgley, Staffordshire, son of John & Ann Darby.

...The first of a succession of iron manufacturers who bore the same name, he was the son of a Quaker (Society of Friends) farmer residing at Wrens Nest, near Sedgley and served his apprenticeship with a maker of malt-kilns near Birmingham, Later he married and moved to Bristol around 1700, to begin business on his own.

In Bristol he was joined by three partners of the same Quaker persuasion, who provided the necessary capital to enable him to set up works at Baptist Mills, near the city. He carried on the business of malt-mill making and later added brass and iron founding