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
The collection of photographs illustrate various types of civil engineering works including the Whipple through truss railroad bridge, Pennsylvania through truss bridge, suspension bridges, cantilever bridges, reinforced concrete arch bridges and buttress dams. Among the bridge photographs are included the Brooklyn Bridge, the Firth of Forth Bridge, the Tay Bridge and Niagara Falls “Honeymoon” Bridge collapses, the Pecos River railroad trestle bridge and the “Luten Design” reinforced...
Dates:
1879-1984; Majority of material found within 1879-1984
A collection of drawings of large industrial machinery and patents resulting from the refinement and improvement of the machinery manufactured and used by Loewy Hydropress Inc.
This collection contains material relating to the settlement of Harry Packer's estate, which was tied in with the settlement of Asa Packer's estate. He was the youngest son of Asa Packer, founder of Lehigh University.
This scrapbook contains newspaper clippings from the arrival of the Marquis de Lafayette in August 1884 at New York to his visit to Norfolk,
Virginia in October 1824. Among the newspaper articles are five engravings depicting General Lafayette.
Reflected in this collection is the bureaucracy of the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company from a train conductor’s view. The collection contains bulletins, supplements to bulletins, correspondence about operation of trains, train fares, schedules of train stations, time tables, conductor’s documentation of passengers’ destinations, tickets issued and material especially about the Black Diamond Express – the LVRR’s most famous train.
Dates:
1870-1981; Majority of material found within 1909-1915
Abstract
The album contains a collection of photographs of six Pennsylvania bridges and several railroad works possibly inspected by G. W. Philips in a period from 1900 to 1930. Perhaps the most well-known Pennsylvania bridge is the multi concrete arch Hyner Bridge over the Susquehanna River near Renovo, Pennsylvania. The Hell Gate Bridge over the East River in New York City is an anomaly among the construction photographs in the album as the only New York bridge. The album is an interesting...
Dates:
1900-1930; Majority of material found within 1900-1930
Abstract
John Reid, the acknowledged photographer of this picture, was in his lifetime known as a pioneer photographer of the “Iron Horse” (steam locomotives). He introduced the convention of taking the photographs “from a position just ahead of the smoke box” in the late 1850s. This angle is apparent in this photograph as the 4-4-0 steam locomotive positioned on the Harlem Bridge. The bridge is an example of a Post box-truss type developed by Simeon S. Post in 1863. Based on information printed...
Abstract
The Borough of the Bronx of the City of New York is bound on the south and southwest by the Harlem River, on the west by the Hudson River, on the north by Westchester County and the east by the most westerly reaches of the Long Island Sound and on the south by the East River. In 1898 the Bronx, formerly a part of Westchester County, was incorporated into the City of New York. It is the only New York City borough on the mainland. In 1848, a physical connection was made between the island...