Union Bridge Company

Last updated

The Union Bridge Company was a bridge fabricator and contractor with works in Buffalo, New York, (believed closed in 1890 per HAER references) and Athens, Pennsylvania. The Union Bridge company was formed in 1884 as a merger of several other bridge-building firms. Partners included George S. Field of Buffalo, Edmund B. Hayes of Buffalo, Charles MacDonald of New York City, Thomas C. Clarke of Seabright, NY and Charles Stewart Maurice of Athens, PA. [1]

Contents

History

Kellogg, Clarke & Co. was formed in 1869 by Thomas C. Clarke and Charles Kellogg, with the backing of Samuel Reeves of the "Phoenix Iron Works" of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. In 1871, Kellogg left to form his own company and Clarke and Reeves formed "Clarke, Reeves & Co." In 1884, "Clarke, Reeves & Co." became the "Phoenix Bridge Company." In the same year, Clarke and Charles Macdonald formed the Union Bridge Company by merger of the "Central Bridge Company" of Buffalo, New York and Kellogg and Maurice of Athens, Pennsylvania. [2]

In 1900, The Union Bridge Company was purchased by the American Bridge Company in a consolidation of 24 US bridge building companies. [3]

A company with the same name, chartered in 1873, was involved in a US Supreme Court case in 1907 involving compliance with a law giving the Secretary of War the authority to order removal of obstructions to navigation on rivers and waterways. It is not yet clear if this is the same company or not.

Notable projects

Poughkeepsie Bridge in 1900 Detroit Photographic Company (0676).jpg
Poughkeepsie Bridge in 1900

Not by date:

Related Research Articles

Piermont, New York Village in New York, United States

Piermont is a village incorporated in 1847 in Rockland County, New York, United States. Piermont is in the town of Orangetown, located north of the hamlet of Palisades, east of Sparkill, and south of Grand View-on-Hudson, on the west bank of the Hudson River. The population was 2,510 at the 2010 census. Woody Allen set The Purple Rose of Cairo, a fictional film within The Purple Rose of Cairo (1984) in Piermont.

Swing bridge

A swing bridge is a movable bridge that has as its primary structural support a vertical locating pin and support ring, usually at or near to its center of gravity, about which the turning span can then pivot horizontally as shown in the animated illustration to the right. Small swing bridges as found over canals may be pivoted only at one end, opening as would a gate, but require substantial underground structure to support the pivot.

Saugatuck River

The Saugatuck River is a 23.7-mile-long (38.1 km) river in southwestern Connecticut in the United States. It drains part of suburban and rural Fairfield County west of Bridgeport, emptying into Long Island Sound.

Niagara Cantilever Bridge

The Niagara Cantilever Bridge or Michigan Central Railway Cantilever Bridge was a cantilever bridge across the Niagara Gorge. An international railway-only bridge between Canada and the United States, it connected Niagara Falls, New York, and Niagara Falls, Ontario, located just south of the Whirlpool Bridge, and opened to traffic in 1883, it was replaced by the Michigan Central Railway Steel Arch Bridge in 1925.

West Shore Railroad

The West Shore Railroad was the final name of a railroad that ran from Weehawken, New Jersey, which is across the Hudson River from New York City, north along the west shore of the river to Albany, New York, and then west to Buffalo. It was organized as a competitor to the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, but was soon taken over by that company.

Walkway over the Hudson

The Walkway over the Hudson is a steel cantilever bridge spanning the Hudson River between Poughkeepsie, New York, on the east bank and Highland, New York, on the west bank. Built as a double track railroad bridge, it was completed on January 1, 1889, and formed part of the Maybrook Railroad Line of the New Haven Railroad.

Canvass White

Canvass White was an American engineer and inventor. He was chief engineer at the Delaware and Raritan Canal and he patented Rosendale cement, which became the dominant cement in the United States until 1900.

National Register of Historic Places listings in Fairfield County, Connecticut

This is intended to be a complete list of the properties and districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. The locations of National Register properties and districts for which the latitude and longitude coordinates are included below may be seen in an online map.

Coraopolis Bridge

The Coraopolis Bridge is a girder bridge over the back channel of the Ohio River connecting Grand Avenue on Neville Island to Ferree Street in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania. It opened in 1995 to replace a structure of historic significance. The original Pratt/Bowstring/Pennsylvania through truss spans, designed by Theodore Cooper, were formerly the (third) Sixth Street Bridge, spanning the Allegheny River, in downtown Pittsburgh, and were built in 1892 by the Union Bridge Company. They were floated downstream by the Foundation Company in 1927 rather than being demolished when the bridge was removed to enable construction of the present (fourth) Three Sisters (Pittsburgh) Sixth Street Self-anchored suspension bridge. However, by the late 1980s, the old bridge could no longer support traffic volumes and was replaced by a newer structure.

Harahan Bridge

The Harahan Bridge is a cantilevered through truss bridge that carries two rail lines and a pedestrian bridge across the Mississippi River between West Memphis, Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee. The bridge is owned and operated by Union Pacific Railroad and is the second longest pedestrian/bicycle bridge in the United States. It was built with roadways cantilevered off the sides of the main structure for vehicles. These roadways are owned by the cities of Memphis, Tennessee and Crittenden County, Arkansas, and were used from 1917–1949, until the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge opened 400 feet (120 m) south of the Harahan. The bridge was named in honor of railroad executive James Theodore Harahan, former president of the Illinois Central Railroad, who was killed in a railroad accident during the construction of the bridge. In February 2011, Union Pacific Railroad officials agreed to the idea of converting the 1917 roadways into a bicycle-pedestrian walkway across the river. In June 2012, Memphis was awarded a $14.9 million federal grant to build the walkway. The overall project was expected to cost $30 million, of which about $11 million was used for the Harahan Bridge portion. Construction was completed in 2016.

Thebes Bridge

The Thebes Bridge is a five span cantilever truss bridge carrying the Union Pacific Railroad across the Mississippi River between Illmo, Missouri and Thebes, Illinois. It is owned by the Southern Illinois and Missouri Bridge Company, now a Union Pacific subsidiary.

Phoenix Iron Works (Phoenixville, Pennsylvania)

The Phoenix Iron Works, located in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, was a manufacturer of iron and related products during the 19th century and early 20th century. Phoenix Iron Company was a major producer of cannons for the Union Army during the American Civil War. The company also produced the Phoenix column, an advance in construction material. Company facilities are a core component of the Phoenixville Historic District, a National Register of Historic Places site that was in 2006 recognized as a historic landmark by ASM International.

Charles Conrad Schneider

Charles Conrad Schneider, often referred to as C. C. Schneider, was an American civil engineer and bridge designer. Schneider was also a member and president of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Housatonic River Railroad Bridge United States historic place

The Housatonic River Railroad Bridge is a historic bridge carrying Metro-North Railroad's New Haven Line trackage across the lower Housatonic River in the U.S. state of Connecticut. The bridge is also used by Amtrak for its Northeast Corridor services. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987, which also refers to the bridge as the Devon Bridge. It is also referred to as the Devon Railroad Bridge by the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Saugatuck River Bridge

The Saugatuck River Bridge is a bridge in Connecticut carrying Route 136 over the Saugatuck River in Westport. The bridge, built in 1884, is the oldest surviving movable bridge in Connecticut and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The total length of the bridge is 87.5 metres (287 ft) with a deck width of 6.1 metres (20 ft) and a minimum vertical clearance of 2.1 metres (6.9 ft) above the river. The bridge carries an average of about 16,000 vehicles per day. In 2007, the bridge was named the William F. Cribari Memorial Bridge.

Toltz, King & Day

Toltz, King & Day was an architectural and engineering firm in Minnesota, which is now TKDA.

Edmund B. Hayes

Edmund B. Hayes, also known as General Edmund Hayes, (1849–1923) was an engineer and businessman who built bridges and manufactured autos. He was a pioneer investor in the development of electrical power from Niagara Falls. His company installed the Steel Arch Bridge over the Niagara River and made the first power plant on the Canadian side of the river.

References

  1. Maurice Papers, Southern Historical Collection, Library of the University of NC, Chapel Hill, NC.
  2. "Great Achievements - Celebrating notable structural engineers - Thomas C. Clarke". STRUCTURE magazine. May 2008. Archived from the original on June 9, 2011. Retrieved January 29, 2011.
  3. Darnell, Victor (1984). A Directory of American Bridge-Building Companies, 1840-1900 (PDF). Occasional Publication No. 4. Washington, D.C: Society for Industrial Archeology. Retrieved January 29, 2011.