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The construction of durable Iron Highway Bridges instead of perishable wooden structures – securing, as it does an ornamental and permanent improvement to the public highways, and avoiding their frequent obstruction for the repair or rebuilding of wooden bridges failing from decay, storm or fire – has become an imperative public want, wherever trial has been made of properly designed and constructed work.

Since the presentation of our last album in 1873, the rapid increase in the variety and amount of out business, in the design and manufacture of bridges and of all kinds of structures of iron and steel, renders it necessary for us to exhibit to the public, and to our friends and customers particularly, the present state of constructive engineering as existing at the works of the Phoenix Bridge Company.

the King Iron Bridge & Manufacturing Company of Cleveland, Ohio (later the King Bridge Company) was founded by Zenas King in 1858. Many of the Company's bridges were used during America's expansion West in the late 1800's and early 1900's and some of these bridges are still standing today. The bridge pictured on this website represent some of the beautiful King iron bridges. We are trying to locate any existing ones in order to preserve these pieces of American history.

Debate about the descriptor for Victoria's second university was not prolonged and through an enabling Act 1958, Monash University became one of a very few universities in the world named after a military hero. Of German-Jewish immigrant stock Sir John Monash was Australian, indeed Victorian, to the core and is still regarded as Australia's greatest fighting General. He was possessed of such diverse talents that his scholastic failures as a young man serve to remind us that even great men are human and that focus, application and determination are key ingredients for success as much in academia as in other spheres of life.

See "Album of Designs of the Phoenix Bridge Company."

The theory of the equilibrium of arches, until of late years, commanded but little attention from practical men, partly owing to the fact that, since it was derived from observations of their own failures and successes, it came rather too late to be of much service to them, but chiefly owing to the form in which it was presented by mathematicians, who, by giving a fictitious importance to insignificant matters, effectually obscured the broad truth, that the whole question was essentially a comparatively simple problem of weight and leverage.

Eugene Figg, Jr., loves bridges. His company, the Figg Engineering Group, of Tallahassee, Florida, is the only national engineering firm in America that does nothing but bridges. He loves to talk about the bridges he’s built, how they’re faring, how the people who own them feel about them now.

He’s proud of the ones that came in early and under budget (like the Natchez Trace Parkway Arches, budgeted for $15 million, brought in for $11 million). He’s equally proud of the ones that won major design awards. The National Endowment for the Arts began giving Presidential Design Awards in 1984. A total of 41 awards have been given, only five for bridges, and Figg got three of those: Lin Cove Viaduct in North Carolina (1984), Sunshine Sky Bridge in Florida (1988) and the Natchez Trace Parkway Arches in Tennessee (1995). Figg’s pride in his bridges doesn’t come off like vanity; it’s more like a parent talking to anyone who’ll listen about a child who is doing well in the world.

He was in Buffalo last week for a conference of the Association for Bridge Construction and Design, where he spoke about bridge permitting and community involvement issues, and about the community design charettes for which he has become famous. He also managed to talk with a good number of people involved in the Peace Bridge expansion: Buffalo Development Commissioner Joseph Ryan, Common Council President James Pitts, the Buffalo News editorial board, the Public Bridge Review Panel’s Technical Review Subcommittee, and about 75 people at D’Youville College, a meeting incorporated into one of the New Millennium Group’s informational sessions.

The Louisville-Nashville Railroad Bridge, constructed in 1857-1859 as part of the Louisville-Nashville Railway System, spans the Green River and is still used by trains of the current CSX system in its reconstructed form. During the construction of the L&N railroad, the Green River presented a formidable obstacle that had to be surmounted. A well-known construction engineer from Germany, Albert Fink, was hired to design and supervise the construction of a massive structure over the Green River. He planned to support the tracks and all trains over this bridge by constructing an elaborate trusswork of his own design supported by four enormous and intricately detailed stone piers. John W. Key of Woodsonville and his two sons, Abner David Lewis Key and John Martin Key, all stonemasons, were hired to construct the piers.

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Mid-19th century advertisement for Wendell Bollman from a City Directory , a civil and constructing engineer noted for his truss bridges. An engraving in the ad. shows a truss bridge with a Civil War era locomotive about to cross it. The address for Bollman's works was given as Clinton Street and Second Avenue, Canton.