Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and the Spanning of America

by Henry Petroski

  Like many a child of immigrants, without money or access to established private colleges, Steinman began attending the City College of New York. In fact, because of his precocity, he began taking college classes even while he was still in high school. Eventually, the ambitious and conscientious young student, with the help of one of his teachers, was able to obtain a pass to enter the Williamsburg Bridge construction site. He climbed upon the steelwork and proceeded across the catwalks set up for the cable-spinning operation, thus seeming to follow an inexorable pull toward a life of, on, and about bridges. Steinman had to work to put himself through college, but he graduated summa cum laude in 1906 with a bachelor-of-science degree. Since he wanted a degree in engineering, he applied to Columbia University, whose School of Mines had been established in 1864, just two years after the Morrill Land Grant Act had promoted an expansion of engineering schools around the country.

  Steinman’s application was read by Professor William H. Burr, who endorsed it with a personal note: “The most deserving case I have known in all my years at Columbia.” The aggressive and assiduous young man was eventually able to piece together enough scholarships, fellowships, and nighttime teaching jobs at City College and Stuyvesant Evening High School to complete three degrees at Columbia. In 1909, he was awarded the A.M. and C.E. degrees, having written for the latter an engineering thesis entitled “The Design of the Henry Hudson Memorial Bridge as a Steel Arch.” Twenty-five years later, the Henry Hudson Bridge, connecting the uppermost tip of Manhattan and the Bronx, would be built by Steinman’s firm, substantially as he had designed it in his thesis.

  Even while still a student, Steinman engaged in miscellaneous engineering work, including projects involving subways, elevated railways, and aqueducts for New York City, and in 1910 he accepted an offer to become the youngest professor of civil engineering in the country—at the University of Idaho. Although he was far from the Brooklyn Bridge, Steinman’s thoughts were not far from bridges. The following year, while continuing to teach in Moscow, Idaho, Steinman received his Ph.D. degree from Columbia. His dissertation, a comparative study of cantilever and suspension bridges, was of less urgency in the wake of the collapse of the Quebec cantilever, but nevertheless did treat a topic of keen interest to engineers. The work, Suspension Bridges and Cantilevers: Their Economic Proportions and Limiting Spans, was soon published under the same title as a textbook in the Van Nostrand Science Series, and a second edition appeared two years later. Steinman had an instinct for writing and publishing, especially on new, significant, and controversial topics, and he exploited it to the hilt. While teaching in Idaho, he also translated two books from the German: the highly mathematical Theory of Arches and Suspension Bridges, in which Josef Melan expounded the deflection theory that Moisseiff had introduced in the design of the Manhattan Bridge, and Melan’s Plain and Reinforced Concrete Arches. Such a prolific output was fast establishing Steinman as a successful academic, but he by no means neglected practical engineering—or practical self-promotion. It is difficult to imagine how otherwise Engineering News in 1913 carried an article on a timber cantilever bridge “built by a troop of Boy Scouts over the Potlatch River, Idaho, after a sketch made by Prof. D. B. Steinman.” The magazine could hardly have been expected to send a reporter to Idaho to cover the story, collect a sketch of the design, and take a photograph of the Boy Scouts flanking their engineer leader.

  Professor William H. Burr, who strongly endorsed David Steinman’s application to Columbia University (photo credit 6.2)

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  David Steinman was not satisfied with building timber bridges with Boy Scouts, and he wrote to Gustav Lindenthal about the possibility of working with him on the Hell Gate Bridge, whose construction was then beginning in New York. Preceded by the credentials of his translation of Melan’s books on arches and suspension bridges, which had been published in 1913, the young engineer began working in New York as special assistant to Lindenthal, second only to Ammann, on July 1, 1914. Steinman personally calculated the internal loads, including those due to temperature changes, and visible deflections associated with the erection of the Hell Gate arch, and he supervised teams of engineers who measured the actual strains and displacements at key points on the structure. The design and construction of the great arch was based on theoretical calculations; the measurements on the actual bridge confirmed not only the validity of the specific calculations for that structure but also the basic validity of the theory itself, thus advancing the confidence of engineers to apply it to still larger structures, such as the Bayonne arch, in the future.

  Steinman reported the results of his calculations, and their comparison with the measured values, in a paper presented at the same meeting of the American Society of Civil Engineers at which Ammann presented his paper on the design and construction of the Hell Gate Bridge. Next to Ammann’s global paper, which put the great project in historical perspective, Steinman’s appeared to be that of an engineer with his nose pressed to the drawing board, looking so closely at the details and how to calculate and check them with measurements as to lose sight of the bigger picture. There was, however, in Steinman’s paper a brief outline of the “growing movement” to supplement and check theoretical calculations with experimental measurements. Lindenthal and Steinman, at least, knew that the bigger picture was in jeopardy, as it had been in Quebec, without close and personal attention to details that rested solely on theory. At the end of his synopsis of his paper, Steinman gave “special acknowledgement” to Lindenthal, “who undertook to make these measurements in furtherance of engineering science.” Lindenthal, in his discussion of this “able paper,” explained that he had “wanted to ascertain what, if any, bending stresses remained in the trusses after erection,” recalling that such stresses had been significant enough to cause one of the steel tubes in the Eads Bridge to need replacing after it broke when the arch was closed. Lindenthal concluded his remarks with the confident assertion that, thanks to Steinman, “there are no unknown stresses in the Hell Gate Arch structure” to cause any cracking or breaking.

  David Steinman (seventh from right) and Boy Scouts on the wooden cantilever bridge they built across a stream in Idaho (photo credit 6.3)

  At the end of his paper, where acknowledgments were more traditionally made, Steinman mentioned those who had helped him with the new extensometer, or “strain gauge,” that was employed, and those who had helped with some of the calculations. Finally, he also thanked Ammann for unspecified “suggestions.” Ammann apparently could not graciously leave his involvement at that, however, and in a written discussion he expressed caveats about the generality of Steinman’s work: “The analysis of the painstakingly recorded stress measurements, made by Mr. Steinman, may lead the uninitiated reader to overlook the important fact that he has to do with an extremely special case, which may not repeat itself in the history of bridge construction.” Ammann also pointed out that “one important object” had not been accomplished by Steinman—namely, that the “actual stresses,” as opposed to the secondary and erection stresses referred to by Lindenthal, remained indeterminate. But, so as not to appear to be contradicting Lindenthal, Ammann added that “the expense for such further investigation is too heavy for an individual engineer”—an allusion to Lindenthal, who himself had assumed the costs of the study. Ammann suggested that a government agency or an engineering society in cooperation with the railroads should sponsor such a project.

  In his closure to the discussions of his paper, Steinman pointed out that, contrary to Ammann’s suggestion that he was claiming more generality than his work allowed, there was “but one paragraph” in the entire paper that was “not a rigorous deduction from the results of the investigation,” and it was a simple statement of considered judgment as to how other structures might behave. With undertones somewhat at odds with the usual gentlemanly exchanges among members of a professional society discussing one another’s papers, Steinman wrote that he “would like to ask Mr. Ammann to point
out anything in the summary of conclusions which can possibly be regarded as too far-reaching a deduction from the results of the investigation.” That there was a tension and competition between the two engineers was thus evident in the discussion of this early paper, and perhaps one aspect of it was highlighted in Steinman’s closure, in which he appears to have deliberately introduced titles before the names of the discussants, referring to Mr. Ammann and Dr. Lindenthal. Although Lindenthal’s doctorate from Dresden was honorary and Steinman’s from Columbia was earned, they shared a title of which he no doubt wished to remind Ammann.

  Acknowledging Ammann at all may have been somewhat begrudging on Steinman’s part, because were it not for Ammann, Steinman might have been in charge of the entire project and thus the logical person to write the more comprehensive paper. When the war called Ammann back to Switzerland, Steinman had assumed responsibilities for the connecting-railroad project for which the Hell Gate Bridge was the engineering centerpiece. However, despite his increased responsibilities, Steinman continued to be paid his initial salary of $200 per month. It was only as a “wedding present,” when Steinman married Irene Hoffmann on June 9, 1915, that his salary was raised to the $225 which Ammann had been receiving. After Ammann returned from his stint in the Swiss army, Steinman was no longer to be second in command to Lindenthal: he seems clearly to have preferred the European-trained Ammann to the American Steinman, who seemed to want to forget his European roots.

  David Steinman had also played an important role in the design and analysis of the Sciotoville Bridge, Lindenthal’s other technologically significant project of the period. As a result of the new methods Steinman had developed in the course of this work, Engineering Record “commissioned him to write a series of articles presenting his new design methods.” According to Steinman’s biographer Ratigan—a World War II correspondent and a writer of “stories and adventure serials”—when Ammann returned from Switzerland he reportedly persuaded Lindenthal to curtail his rival’s articles, although the impending consolidation of the journal with Engineering News may have been a less insidious factor. In any case, there was clearly a lot more than technical know-how to being a successful engineer—and to letting the world know about it.

  Lindenthal reportedly called the younger engineer into his office one day and told him, “Steinman, bridge engineering is easy. It is the financial engineering that is hard.” A major part of Lindenthal’s complaint, which no doubt centered on his continuing frustrations in finding backers for his Hudson River Bridge proposal, was that bankers added millions of dollars in financing costs to bridges after “engineers had sweated and strained to secure the most economical design.” These words were evidently taken to heart by Steinman, an inveterate student who seemed to measure his life by his documented degrees, honors, and achievements, and almost to lust after any recognition or achievement that he did not yet have. Not that Steinman did not work for what he got. Upon recognizing that he had no formal training in the important aspect of engineering that Lindenthal had discussed, Steinman enrolled in a correspondence course in business administration, which he found invaluable in his later career. Even if this aspect of the engineering endeavor seemed subsequently not to have been Steinman’s favorite, he learned to talk the language of and to work with not only bankers and investors but also public officials and other nontechnical people essential to getting a large engineering project off the drawing board, and also off the ground. Lindenthal, on the other hand, for all his understanding of the importance of financing, saw no room for compromise in his plans. When the war put a stop to engineering projects, especially of the kind that he had dreamed about, Ammann may at least have given the impression of being more sympathetic to the elder engineer’s technical resolve. In any case, it was Ammann who was kept on Lindenthal’s payroll, however indirectly, and Steinman who was let go.

  Years hence, when the two rivals would approve, if not compose, their own curricula vitae for Who’s Who in Engineering, Ammann would list his service under Lindenthal as extending from 1912 to 1923, not mentioning that some of those years were spent in exile at the New Jersey clay mine in which Lindenthal had an interest. Steinman’s record of service under the master extended only from 1914 to 1917. Their respective entries in the 1959 edition of this biographical dictionary tell a good deal more than factual details, however; they also tell a lot about the personalities of the engineers.

  Ammann’s entry occupies only one column, though this could reflect either his relative shyness and modesty or his sense of security in his significant accomplishments. After the standard identification of his origins, education, and marital status, there is a chronological listing of his principal engineering projects, giving in parentheses the dollar value of the most significant ones. The entry concludes with a list of memberships in professional and other organizations.

  Steinman’s Who’s Who entry offers a sharp contrast. Following a long list of engineering projects, but without any mention of their dollar value, there is a much longer list of honors, awards, and memberships, seemingly citing every organization from which he had ever received a certificate of membership or a statement of dues. More curious than what is included is what is omitted from the very beginning of Steinman’s entry. In a biographical dictionary whose entries customarily begin with a description of a person’s origins, Steinman’s contribution omits entirely any mention of his parents, as if he had maintained a firm resolve to suggest that his beginnings were in the stone and steel of a mythic bridge rather than in the flesh of immigrants. After his place and date of birth, the entry goes immediately to his education—including the number of medals, scholarships, and fellowships he won as a student pursuing his various degrees—as if to record that he did it all himself.

  He was not merely keeping personal matters out of a professional biography, for his marriage is recorded, as are the names of his three children. It is hard to escape the conclusion that Steinman wished to obscure if not forget his origins, which were, according to a 1958 New York Times Magazine profile, “in the slums, in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge,” giving a different twist to the bridge’s inspiration for his career. On the other hand, he was immensely proud of his marriage to Irene Hoffmann, daughter of a former member of the Faculty of Medicine at Vienna, who not only approved of his daughter’s marrying a young man with a Ph.D. but also encouraged her to do so, that he might have a son-in-law with whom he could discuss Kantian philosophy. Such dichotomies would naturally lead to tensions in Steinman’s later life, at which the biographical dictionary could only hint. In the mid-1950s, for example, he would be identified as one of many significant personalities who had begun life as a Jew and had made things happen. Yet, during the same period, Steinman himself was turning away from those roots, telling reporters that he was “active in Presbyterian affairs.”

  In spite of whatever unresolved personal tensions he experienced, Steinman accomplished a great deal in his life and career. And in spite of the niggardly professional recognition Ammann gave him in discussions and reviews of his work, Steinman’s reputation became established through his books. In 1917, he accepted an appointment as professor of civil and mechanical engineering at his alma mater, City College of New York, which then was organizing a school of engineering. One day, in the spring of 1920, while Steinman was still head of the engineering school, he received a telephone call from “a man who modestly introduced himself as H. D. Robinson.” The two met, and Holton Robinson described to Steinman an international design competition for a bridge at Florianópolis, to connect that capital city of the off-coast island state of Santa Catarina with the Brazilian mainland, and proposed that they join in an effort to produce an entry.

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  Steinman had dreamed of actually building bridges of his own, but until that time, with the exception of directing the Boy Scout troop in building a modest cantilever, he had worked exclusively on others’. Now Robinson made it possible for him to participate as an equal p
artner in a major bridge project. It was a rare opportunity, for there was little work for bridge engineers in the early 1920s, and Steinman jumped at the chance. He went into private practice as a consulting engineer, renting a desk in the office of a friend for ten dollars a month and working on jobs for fees as small as five dollars. He soon got larger jobs, such as writing a survey for $250 and inspecting forty railroad bridges for a fee of ten dollars each. With business picking up, he was able in 1921 to move into his own office and hire assistants and draftsmen. Steinman invited Robinson to share this office, and the older engineer thus moved from “a drafting table in his home, where he did all computing and drafting himself,” including solving “difficult three-span catenary problems by suspending a fine chain against the wall and measuring the ordinates.” With Robinson’s practical experience and Steinman’s theoretical talents, technical traits that complemented each other as nicely as did the engineers’ different personalities, the partnership of Robinson & Steinman would be able to compete successfully for major bridge projects for many years to come.

  Holton Duncan Robinson was a generation older than Steinman, having been born in 1863 at Massena, New York, near the Canadian border. He was the son of Ichabod Harvey and Isabelle McLeod Robinson, and his Scots-English ancestry included Sir Alexander Mackenzie, the Canadian explorer after whom the river is named. Robinson grew up on the family farm beside Robinson Bay, which is located on the St. Lawrence River, and from childhood he was “outstandingly shy, modest, and retiring.” He attended a local college, St. Lawrence, in nearby Canton, New York, and studied liberal arts and sciences, receiving a bachelor-of-science degree in 1886.

  Young Robinson entered the engineering field through his uncle, the bridge builder George W. McNulty, who was associated with Leffert Buck. Buck and McNulty in turn had begun in engineering under Washington Roebling on the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, and had started their own firm after that project was completed. Robinson began working on survey crews for Buck and McNulty and studying engineering at home. He slowly gained a variety of experience, being sent to the sites of various bridge projects, including one in the small town of Suspension Bridge, New York, where he took charge of repairs on the stiffening truss of John Roebling’s aging Niagara Gorge Bridge. After a few years as draftsman and assistant engineer in the chief engineer’s office of the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad Company, Robinson accepted an offer to return, as chief draftsman, to work under Buck, who was then chief engineer planning the Williamsburg Bridge. Robinson eventually became assistant engineer in charge of cable construction on the bridge, remaining so when Lindenthal became bridge commissioner. (Perhaps Holton Robinson and young David Steinman may actually have passed each other on the catwalks.) In 1904, after the Williamsburg Bridge had opened, Robinson was transferred to the Manhattan Bridge project and placed in charge of design and construction—again under Buck, who was consulting engineer to Othniel Foster Nichols, an 1868 graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who was chief engineer of New York’s Department of Bridges from 1904 to 1906, in which position he oversaw the redesign of the Manhattan Bridge after Lindenthal’s departure from the position of commissioner.