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Lindenthal Recruited

Work on Davis' bridge was begun in the summer of 1880. It was to be a suspension bridge having two channel spans of 360 feet each and two shore spans of 180 feet each. Foundations for the channel piers were put in first and the piers were built up to an average height of ten feet each. Since the winter of 1880 was unusually severe, further work on the bridge was stopped. (28) None of the drawings for this abortive design seem to have survived.

In February 1881, the Bridge Company was reorganized and as a consequence all work on Davis' bridge was stopped and all prior contracts cancelled. The man who now held the controlling interest in the company's stock, David Hostetter, was also largely interested in Pittsburgh and Lake Erie and wished a different type of structure, because he thought it might be possible to run cars from his own line on the south bank to the lines of the Baltimore and Ohio on the north. Consequently a young German engineer, Gustav Lindenthal, was called in to make a design for a through-truss bridge. (29)

The new bridge engineer was also an immigrant. He was born in Brunn, Moravia, Austria-Hungary, and had been educated at the Provincial College of Brunn and at the polytechnical schools of Brunn and Vienna. He worked on railways in Austria and Switzerland before coming to America in 1874; in 1876 he assisted in the construction of buildings for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. In 1881 he established himself in a private engineering practice in Pittsburgh. He was engaged in many railway and bridge projects, including the reconstruction of bridges on parts of what is now the Erie Railroad, various bridges in and near Pittsburgh, and railway surveys and estimates in Pennsylvania and neighboring states. When he reached the age of forty, he had established a reputation as one of America's great bridge engineers, and certainly the new Smithfield Street project was no small factor in his rise to fame.

In 1890 he set up a consulting office in New York City, devoting most of his time to bridge work. His best known works are the Queensboro Bridge (1901-1908) over the East River in New York, the Hell Gate Bridge (completed 1917) for the New York Connecting Railroad, and the Sciotoville Bridge (1914-1917) over the Ohio River. In 1902-03 he served as commissioner of bridges for the City of New York. In this capacity he advocated and established the practice of the association of engineers, in the design of large bridges, with architects whose special interest lay in the aesthetics of bridge construction.

As an engineer his greatest vision never materialized -- a bridge over the Hudson River at New York. From 1880 until his death he worked on the problem of transportation from New York to the Jersey shore and he constantly urged the adoption of his North River Bridge scheme. However, complications arising from decisions of the United States Army Engineers with reference to clearance, defeated final approval. The long span, 3,100 feet, heavy loading, and the huge costs of this project may be taken as a measure of Lindenthal's vision.

His designs were characterized by originality and boldness. He differed from many of his American contemporaries in his frequent choice of more complex structural forms and in some of his views as to working stresses. Like Roebling, he wrote much and he contributed to learned journals, many technical papers, chiefly on bridge design, but his chief monuments were his works. Pittsburgh is fortunate still to possess the first of his great designs which yet functions today, still serving its contiguous land areas and supporting weights that the engineer could not have foreseen when it was designed. (30)

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