University

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.

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.

[No suitable text.]

Bridges are employed to support weight over an open space, and transfer this weight to their supports, or abutments. They may be fundamentally classified by the reactions they exert upon their abutments. They may push on the abutments, pull on them, or simply rest on the abutments without horizontal forces. In general, the production of horzontal forces in the bridge structure is the cost of transferring the weight of bridge and load to the abutments. Bridges are generally, and less fundamentally, classified by the type of construction. Arch bridges push on their abutments, suspension bridges pull on them, while beams and trusses rest on their abutments without horizontal forces. The term beam is used when the material of the bridge is in a single piece, such as a log or a plate girder, while a truss is built up of pieces, called members. A truss generally has an upper chord in compression, a lower chord in tension, and web members consisting of diagonal or vertical ties (if in tension) or posts (if in compression).

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.

We call the confluence of the Harlem and the East Rivers in New York City Hell's Gate. Dramatic, I suppose, but why not! A bridge opened over Hell's Gate in 1917. It's an arch of iron girders. The arch thickens at each end. It thins toward the center. You get a feeling of buoyancy looking at it.

Othmar Ammann, who designed the bridge, caught Hell for it. This, says writer Christopher Bonanos, was an age of ornament, gravity, solidity, and dignity. Ammann's design was imperfect in some ways. But its simplicity, lightness, and freedom signaled a new era in design.

Civil engineer.
Born: 26 December 1867 Sandgate, Queensland, Australia. Died: 23 September 1943 Gordeon, New South Wales, Australia.
John Job C. Bradfield was associated with a great range of engineering works including the Cataract and Burrinjuck Dams, the Sydney Underground Railways and Brisbane's Story Bridge. He was, however, best known as one of the original designers of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. For his thesis on the design and construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the city railway system, Bradfield was awarded the degree of Doctor

It will be the effort of the writer in the following pages to point out the peculiarities of material and construction involved in the designing and building of “Iron Highway Bridges,” in the hope that a dissemination of their scientific principles in a popular form, will bear fruit in a more thorough appreciation of a noble art, and in elevating the standard of requirements of this very important class of public works. The subject has been divided into two parts, each complete in itself; the one general and descriptive, and the other analytical. The former is peculiarly intended to present to public committees entrusted with the letting of bridge contracts such information as they ought to possess, while the latter is offered as an aid to engineers not experts in this branch of the profession, and yet who are often called upon to act as inspectors.

Paul Philippe Cret, architect, was born in Lyons, France, on October 23, 1876, the son of Paul Adolphe and Anna Caroline (Durand) Cret. He attended a Lycee in Bourg and studied architecture at the L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Lyons and the L'Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris, where he graduated in 1903. At the Paris school he was awarded the Rougevin Prize and the Grand Medal of Emulation, both in recognition of his remarkable skill as a draftsman. In 1903 he was invited to teach architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, where he remained until his retirement in 1937.

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.