Daniel B. Luten

Last updated
Daniel Benjamin Luten
BornDecember 26, 1869
Grand Rapids, Michigan
DiedJuly 3, 1946
Indianapolis, Indiana, buried Spring Vale Cemetery, Lafayette, Indiana
Alma mater University of Michigan
Known forCivil engineer, inventor, and bridge builder

Daniel B. Luten also known as Daniel Benjamin Luten (Dec. 26, 1869-July 3, 1946) was an American bridge builder and engineer based in Indianapolis, Indiana. [1]

Contents

Beck's Mill Bridge Beck's Mill Bridge eastern side.jpg
Beck's Mill Bridge

Life and career

Luten was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1869. [1] He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1894, in civil engineering. [2] : 4 

For one year he taught Civil Engineering at the University of Michigan as an assistant to Professor Charles E. Greene. [3] He was then an instructor, in architectural and sanitary engineering, for Purdue University from 1895 to 1900, including courses in arch design and theory of hydraulics. [1] [3]

He resigned in 1900 to practice engineering. By 1901, he was focusing exclusively on the design and construction of reinforced concrete bridges. Over the next five years, he designed and contracted and erected around five hundred concrete bridges. Beginning in 1906, he focused exclusively on design and supervision only. [3]

He designed and patented the Luten arch, a type of concrete arch bridge. He obtained more than 30 patents eventually, including various refinements of design that used transverse and other reinforcement which allowed bridges to be lighter. "By 1919, Luten claimed to have designed some 17,000 arches, and stated that examples of his designs could be found in all but three states of the Union. Indiana alone had some 2,000 Luten arches." [2]

List of Bridges

A number of historic bridges, some of which are listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places are credited to him, including (with specific attribution):

Additional Luten arch bridges are NRHP-listed that are attributed to the Luten Bridge Company or to Topeka Bridge & Iron Co., two firms which had use of Luten's patented designs.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Archives Staff. "Purdue University Archives and Special Collections: Daniel B. Luten papers, 1898-1924 [MSF 235]".
  2. 1 2 "University of Michigan" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-03-12. Retrieved 2011-06-04.
  3. 1 2 3 "Luten, Daniel B., 1869-1946". Purdue University Archives and Special Collections. Retrieved 2025-07-29.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. March 13, 2009.
  5. ↑ "3rd Street Bridge". historicbridges.org. Retrieved 10 February 2023.
  6. ↑ National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. "Historic American Engineering Record—Q Street Bridge (Dumbarton Bridge)—HAER No. DC-38" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 February 2014. Retrieved 23 September 2013.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.