Library/Archive

In developing the STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING SLIDE LIBRARY as a comprehensive resource for teaching structural and architectural engineering at college and university level, I felt there was a need to devote a volume to the work of one structural design company. Leonhardt, Andrä and Partners of Stuttgart, Germany, was an ideal choice for this project. One of Europe’s leading structural design companies, its staff has been on the leading edge of many developments in engineering over the past 40 years. Their name has been particularly associated with the development of incrementally launched bridges, cable-stayed bridges, cable-net structures, and prestressed concrete television towers.

From southeast to northwest, Cleveland is traversed by the winding Cuyahoga river valley, which, while it provides the railroads with an effective entrance to the city, cuts it into two distinct districts as far as vehicular traffic is concerned. To provide crossings over the river and its wide valley, several bridges have been builds, notably the Detroit-superior Bridge near the lakefront and the central viaduct to the south. After 25 years of study on viaduct to connect Lorain avenue on the west of the river with the district to the east, in The Course of which time the project was once abounded after bonds had actually been voted for construction, the citizens of Cleveland are opening, the first week in the November, a $6500000 viaduct 5,865 ft. long, with its eastern terminus at central avenue. Dr. Watson's interest in the project has been continuos since its inception.

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.

The King Iron Bridge Co. played an important role in the development and construction of metal truss bridges, a product of American engineering and construction technology, nationwide during the later part of the Nineteenth Century. The King Iron Bridge & Manufacturing Co. was organized under that name in Cleveland in 1871 by Zenas King, who had started his career in building bridges in 1858. King came to Cleveland from Cincinnati around 1861, and by 1865 had established his works on Wason (East 38th St.) between St. Clair and Hamilton Avenue. The Company moved to a larger plant on Ruskin Ave.(East 69th St.) around 1888.

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.

John Monash ran a successful engineering business chiefly in Victoria (Australia) but also in South Australia and to some extent Tasmania from 1894 to 1914. He pursued a parallel career in the Citizen Military Forces. Late in 1914, at the age of 49, he left for WW1 and gained fame as a commander of ANZAC and allied forces on the Western Front. On his return he played a leading role in the establishment of the State Electricity Commission of Victoria.

This website presents stories of engineering design and construction from the period prior to WW1, with photographs and drawings. No technical knowledge is required to follow the stories which contain much human interest.

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

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.