Phoenix Bridge Company

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The Phoenix Bridge Company in Philadelphia (production facilities in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania ) was founded in 1864 as a subsidiary of the Phoenix Iron Company. The firm was headed by David Reeves, senior engineer Adolphus Bonzano , and in the early years it was also known as Kellogg, Clarke and Company (1868-1870) and Clarke, Reeves and Company (1871-1884). In the period after the Civil War it was one of the most important bridge construction companies in the USA and built more than 800 bridges from 1869 to 1884 alone. Most were based on their invention of the Phoenix column (1862), a connector for iron struts. A total of around 1,400 bridges were built with this construction detail. The largest bridge customers were railway companies, but they also built many road bridges. Around 1900 the design of steel bridges changed (riveted bridges could carry heavier loads and did not wear out as quickly as those with a Phoenix connection).

The Calhoun Street Bridge over the Delaware River , truss bridge built in 1884 by the Phoenix Bridge Company with Phoenix columns made of wrought iron

In addition to bridges such as those that crossed the Ohio and Schuykill Rivers in Philadelphia (Girard Avenue Bridge from the World's Fair to the Zoo, 1874), the Kinzua Bridge (at times the highest railway bridge in the world), the Hudson River Bridge in Albany, the bridges of the Intercolonial Railway and the North Shore Railway in Canada, the bridge over the Susquehana in Havre de Grace in Maryland, she also manufactured other steel structures such as roofs and the elevated railways in New York City and Brooklyn. From 1889 the parent company also produced steel. The standardized bridge parts could be compiled from a catalog. Its reputation suffered from a series of damage and collapses. In 1900 it faced stiff competition from the American Bridge Company of the United States Steel Corporation , which later held 90 percent of the US market for bridges. The most famous case of damage was the collapse of the Québec Bridge in 1907 , but there was also a collapse with deaths in Louisville, Kentucky , in 1893 and in Rockbridge County in 1898 . In 1909 she built the Manhattan Bridge in New York. But their best times were over after the First World War . In the 1940s, the parent company tried unsuccessfully to sell the company and in 1962 it was dissolved. Phoenix Steel existed until 1976.

Web links

literature

  • Clarke, Reeves & Co .: Album of designs of the Phoenixville Bridge-works. JB Lippincott, Philadelphia 1873 ( digitized version ).