This collection contains the technical and professional documents of consulting engineer Blair Birdsall. Most of the collection are documents pertaining to the multitude of bridges he worked on, including the Golden Gate, Chesapeake Bay, and Brooklyn Bridges, as a consulting engineer or as a design engineer. The collection spans from 1900 to 2002 covering his entire career and also early Steinman Boynton Gronquist & Birdsall and John A. Roebling Sons Engineering companies.
Abstract
Delaware River Bridge (also known as the Benjamin Franklin Bridge from 1956) construction photographs (circa 1921-1926) contain 208 photographs and one fiscal report dated 1928. Each of these items relate to the Delaware River Bridge connecting Philadelphia, PA to Camden, N.J. The subjects of the photographs are various on site construction views, several artist’s renderings of the proposed bridge and some neighborhood demolition views. An annual report of 21 pages by the Joint...
Abstract
This collection is a single family’s involvement in the development of bridge building in 19th century America. The perspective is of a family of New England itinerant entrepreneur bridge builders. The types of bridges noted are specifically the truss and cantilever styles, illustrated with blueprints, drawings and photographs. The correspondence is between family members working for several bridge fabricating companies. The range of time primarily from the mid 1850s to 1905 shows the...
Detailed drawings of the structural members of a historic cast-iron Pratt-truss bridge which the students of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Lehigh University used for refurbishing and reconstructing the bridge in a public park in nearby Hellertown, Pennsylvania.
Abstract
Documents and photographs related to Lehigh University Civil Engineering faculty William J. Eney's early teaching years (1930s) at civil engineering summer camps (Canadensis, Pa.) including his lecture documents on bridge engineering, his own invention of testing equipment, correspondence between Smithsonian Institution and Lehigh University about Eney Deformeter, photographs and documents about construction of Fritz Engineering Laboratory addition and Baldwin Universal Testing Machine...
