By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, hundreds of bridge fabrication companies designed, marketed, and sold metal truss bridges (as well as other bridge types) to railroads, local government officials, toll companies, and others with a role in developing the nation's transportation system. Pennsylvania, with its many iron and steel mills and extensive network of major railroad lines, was an ideal location for bridge builders, and more than 100 companies operated throughout the state. Ohio bridge firms also did a great deal of business in northwestern Pennsylvania, undoubtedly because favorable railroad connections made shipping costs affordable.
To market their bridges, fabricators aggressively presented their designs to railroad companies and local government officials, publishing catalogues and pamphlets and recruiting sales agents to canvass county seats. Their advertisements explained the ease of erection, low cost, durability, and strength of their designs. Initially, fabricators sought to distinguish their bridges on the basis of patented design elements. However, as metallurgy and the ability to analyze bridge stresses improved, metal truss bridge designs became increasingly standardized. Agents of bridge fabricators attended county commissioners meetings and bridge views to make presentations and display models. Purportedly, they were not above offering kickbacks and gifts to commissioners in order to secure contracts.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the prefabricated metal truss bridge industry was restructured. Intense competition had produced price cutting, falling profits, and numerous bankruptcies. To maintain prices and profits, larger and more dominant companies had resorted to tactics such as price fixing, pooling, and dividing markets. This, in turn, brought charges of corruption and investigations into business practices. In 1900, in order to bring greater rationality to the industry, 24 of the larger bridge manufacturers, representing about 50 percent of the nation's bridge fabricating capacity, were merged into the American Bridge Company. The American Bridge Company expanded some shops and closed or consolidated others. Folded into the newly formed United States Steel in 1901, the American Bridge Company transferred much of its operation to modern facilities at the company town of Ambridge, Pennsylvania. Following the consolidation of the American Bridge Company's operations, a number of former owners and managers of bridge companies closed by the conglomerate re-established independent businesses in their original shops.
Bridge Fabricators Represented in Mercer County
The Canton Bridge Company was incorporated in 1891. Among the original officers and stockholders was David Hammond, the “Daddy of steel bridge building in Ohio,” who had previously founded the Wrought Iron Bridge Company. Hammond brought many of the Wrought Iron Bridge Company’s skilled workers to his new concern. The Canton Bridge Company was a prolific designer and builder of all types of metal bridges, most notably trusses and through girders. The Canton Bridge Company operated throughout the eastern half of the country, with agents from New Jersey to Nebraska. Like most large bridge fabricators, it maintained an extensive and efficient network of sales offices and salesmen. Hammond’s three sons manned not only the Midwest offices in Toledo and Canton, but also handled the company’s large Pennsylvania bridge market. In 1901, the Canton Bridge Company built 25 percent of all Ohio bridges and more than 6,000 bridges nationwide. A 1902 American Pictorial Quarterly article noted that the company built bridges of all sizes, but specialized in “making highway bridges for the smaller country streams.” The same article calls its plant “one of the most complete in the country.” The company also fabricated turntables and structural ironwork. The Canton Bridge Company ceased operation in 1925, when it was purchased by the Massillon Steel Joist Company.
A significant portion of the Canton Bridge Company’s work occurred in northwestern Pennsylvania, which was easily accessible by rail from its Canton manufacturing plant. For example, in 1914 it was awarded 16 bridge contracts in Mercer County, where it had already built a number of bridges.
Cleveland Bridge and Iron Company
The Cleveland Bridge and Iron Company, was formed ca. 1850 as Thatcher, Burt, and Company, with offices in Springfield, Massachusetts and Cleveland, Ohio. The principals, Peter Thatcher, Jr. and George H. Burt, had experience building railroads and railroad bridges throughout the east coast region. In 1852, Thatcher’s nephew, Henry Martyn Claflen, joined the firm, and the Massachusetts office was apparently closed. Thatcher, Burt, and Company purchased the regional rights to build Howe trusses, a bridge type with wood compression members and iron tension members. The company erected Howe truss bridges throughout Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Kentucky in the 1850s. During the Civil War, Claflen built railroad bridges for the Union Army, most notably to help relieve the siege of Chattanooga.
In 1865, Claflen and Albert C. McNairy formed the bridge building firm of McNairy, Claflen & Co. By 1868, the company’s name had been changed to Cleveland Bridge and Car Works. The company now held the rights in southern and western states to “Post’s Diagonal Truss,” a hybrid of a Warren truss and a Whipple truss. Like the Warren truss, the Post truss had compression posts placed at an angle; like the Whipple truss it had diagonals in tension stretching across more than one panel point. In 1875, McNairy, Claflen & Co. entered receivership, although its fabrication shop continued to operate under a lease to another company. In either 1877 or 1879 the company reorganized as the Cleveland Bridge and Iron Company, with Henry Claflen as its president. The last year the Cleveland Bridge and Iron Company appears in the Cleveland city directory is 1894, the year it apparently went out of business.
Columbia Bridge WorksThe Columbia Bridge Works of Dayton, Ohio was established in 1852 by David H. Morrison (1817-1882), Dayton’s first city engineer. Morrison ranks among the earliest engineers to recognize the possibilities of metal truss bridge technology, establishing one of the first bridge companies in the nation, and reportedly building the first all-iron bridge west of the Allegheny Mountains. The firm specialized in Morrison’s patented designs, the most successful of which was a bowstring arch-truss built throughout the Midwest in the 1860s and 1870s.
Fabricator name plate on the Carlton Road Bridge.
In the early 1870s, the Columbia Bridge Works began to produce variations of the Pratt truss design. Like many bridge builders of the period, Morrison developed a number of distinctive, idiosyncratic details. Trademarks were the extensive use of I-beams, which Morrison correctly believed to be an ideal shape for primary members, and bolted lower chord connections that Morrison called lap jointed “Flat Bar Chords.” He claimed that the chords increased stiffness and reduced vibrations from large moving loads. Morrison passed away in 1882, but his company continued under the direction of his son, Charles Carroll Morrison, who had joined as a partner in 1868. The company remained in operation into the 1890s.
The Penn Bridge Company of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, was organized in 1868 as T.B. White & Sons. At the time, the firm constructed wooden bridges. The plant was initially established in New Brighton; it was moved across the Beaver River to Beaver Falls in 1878. In 1887, the firm reorganized and incorporated as the Penn Bridge Company, producers of wrought iron, steel, and combination bridges; iron substructures, buildings, and roof trusses; and plate, box, and lattice girders and architectural ironwork. In the 1890s, the Penn Bridge Company's output averaged 5,000 long tons, ranking it as a small bridge fabricator. The Penn Bridge Company remained independent of the American Bridge Company, and continued to grow over the first two decades of the twentieth century, producing large and small structures and structural steel work. The company added new physical plant in 1902, reincorporated in 1905, and employed more than 500 workers in 1908. The Penn Bridge Company built bridges and structures in nearly all U.S. states and territories. It was particularly prominent in Pittsburgh, the City of Bridges. By 1908, the company had built four bridges over the Ohio River, five over the Monongahela River, and two over the Allegheny River, as well as the original Ohio River Dam Nos. 2, 4, 5, and 6.
Fabricator name plate on the Canal Road Bridge.
Pennsylvania State Highway Department
The Pennsylvania State Highway Department became the key player in highway bridge construction during the 1920s and 1930s. The State Highway Department was created in 1903 to provide state road aid to second class townships. The State Highway Department's mandate changed following the passage of the Sproul Act of 1911, which created an 8,500-mile state highway system and gave the State Highway Department control over it. Passage of the landmark Federal-Aid Road Act in 1916 made federal funds available to construct bridges under the supervision of State Highway Department officials. The passage of the act, combined with increased state funding allocations and directed tax revenues, marked the beginning of a shift in bridge construction from county to state responsibility. During the 1920s, for example, the State Highway Department designed more than 1,400 new bridges for Pennsylvania’s roadways. For longer spans, the Department preferred riveted through truss spans.
The Wrought Iron Bridge Company was organized in 1866 and incorporated in 1871 by David Hammond, a carpenter-turned-bridge builder. The company “immediately took its place in the forefront of the country’s bridge builders,” manufacturing and distributing an impressive variety of metal bridges, including bowstring trusses and an assortment of single and multiple intersection trusses, girder, and swing bridges, most from patented designs. Its 1874 Designs of Wrought Iron Bridges contained articles on the strength, durability, resistance to corrosion, and working loads for iron bridges. The company, with agents spread across the nation, built bridges throughout the continental United States. By 1880, it had purportedly built more highway bridges than any other bridge company in the country. A large company with a capacity of approximately 10,000 tons per year, it was absorbed into the American Bridge Company in 1901.