Secondary Source

Drury Blakeley Alexander (1924-), architectural educator, served as professor at the University of Texas School of Architecture and continues to serve the city through the Historic Landmarks Commission and the University as a champion of the preservation of the University's historic buildings, resident historian, and special friend to the Architecture and Planning Library. Creative works, correspondence, memoirs, printed material, minutes, maps, images, photographs, student work, slides, and artifacts, (1887-1995) created or collected by Drury Blakely Alexander, evidence his career in education and interests in architectural history and preservation.

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.

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.

Aware that control of the country's river systems would important to both sides in the Civil War, Eads proposed the U.S. government invest in the development of steam-powered, ironclad warships. Eads made his proposal before the war, but his idea was coolly received. When he was awarded a contract, he employed upwards of 4,000 men to build the U.S. ironclad armada that would prove decisive in Union efforts against Forts Henry and Donelson, at Memphis, Island No. 10, Vicksburg, and Mobile Bay. In a remarkable feat Eads turned out his first ironclad 45 days after he began production. The ironclad idea would be adopted by the Confederacy and both sides would improve on Eads' idea throughout the war. After the war Eads found a new project, the spanning of the Mississippi with a suitable bridge to carry everything from people to trains. The self-trained engineer proposed a triple-arch design fabricated from steel. Each span was roughly 500 hundred feet and rested on piers resting on bedrock some 100 feet beneath the river bottom. The building of the arches involved steel supplied by Andrew Carnegie's steel works. Eads required that the 18 inch diameter hollow tubes conform to a test strength of 60,000 pounds. Many times during construction steel was returned to be re-rolled so that it might meet Eads' exacting standards. Keeping the shipping lanes open was necessary during construction, so Eads designed a cantilever system to support the unjoined arches. A system of pulleys stretched over the piers and supported the arches. Eads was also innovative in that he employed a threaded iron plug to close the arches. He allowed five inches on each arch to be used for threading the plug and closing the distance between the arches. The Eads Bridge was the largest of its kind and quickly became world renowned.

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.

Begun in 1867 and completed in 1874, the Eads Bridge was named after its designer, James Buchanan Eads. It was the first bridge to span the Mississippi at St. Louis, the first bridge to make significant of steel, and one of the first bridges in the U.S. to make use of pneumatic caissons (the caissons sunk for the bridge are still among the deepest ever). It was also the first bridge to be built entirely using cantilever construction methods, avoiding the need for falsework, and the first bridge designed so that any part could be removed for repair or replacement. The bridge is now a National Historic Landmark.

The University Avenue Bridge, an impressive adaptation of modern classicism to a limestone-faced, concrete on steel double leaf bascule bridge, carries university Avenue across the Schuylkill River. Its sweeping monumental piers and towers with bridge operator's houses remain visible from many vantage points. This graceful span forms an integral part of its surrounding cityscape, and serves as a visual landmark along the Schuylkill River.

The University Avenue Bridge runs north/south across the Schuylkill River, and links University Avenue in West Philadelphia, with South 34th Street in the Grays Ferry section of South Philadelphia. The bridge which has a clear height of thirty feet, measures 536 feet in length, and 100 feet in width. Five lanes wide, it accommodates four lanes of traffic going in two directions. The bridge has a pedestrian walkway on either side.

David Bernard Steinman: Born on 11 June 1886 in Khomsk, Brest, Belarus. Deceased on 21 August 1960 in New York, New York, USA. Associated with the following firms:Formerly:Founder(s): Robinson & Steinman; Steinman, Boynton, Gronquist & Birdsall; Steinman, Boynton, Gronquist & London.

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

This an historic occasion. Today we are gathered here to dedicate a famous pioneer structure -- the oldest cable suspension highway bridge in the world -- as a national monument. Because this span has played a dramatic and significant role in the development of bridge engineering, and because its outstanding record of more than a century of distinguished service is interwoven with the unfolding panorama of American history, it is altogether fitting and proper that the shrine to thrill and inspire future generations.

When this great structure -- the first bridge over the Ohio River -- was completed in 1849, it was truly notable achievement. Its span of 1,010 feet was by far the longest in the world, the first time human courage and resourcefulness had achieved a span exceeding one-thousand feet.