Bridge Fabrication Companies

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. Bridge companies established or contracted with foundries and metal manufacturers for a cheap supply of structural iron and steel, the raw material of metal truss bridges. The companies formed, drilled, and assembled the pieces in their own shops prior to shipping them to the bridge site, where the bridge was erected in the field.

Pennsylvania, with its many iron and steel mills and extensive network of major railroad lines, was an ideal location for bridge builders. Between 1870 and 1900, more than 100 bridge fabrication companies operated in Pennsylvania (Lichtenstein and Associates 1999:IV-33). The southern tier of New York and northeastern Ohio possessed similar attributes and were also home to many bridge building companies. All marketed their products and services to Bradford County governmental officials.

To market their prefabricated bridges, bridge companies 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 patented designs (Darnell 1984:42-46). 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 (Lichtenstein and Associates 1999:III-5-7). 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 (Lichtenstein and Associates 1999:IV-32). The ethically suspect activities of sales agents for bridge companies are documented elsewhere (HAER 1968).

In the late 1890s, the prefabricated metal truss bridge industry began a restructuring. Intense competition had produced price cutting, falling profits, and numerous bankruptcies. To maintain prices and profits, larger and more dominant companies had resorted to price fixing, pooling, and dividing markets, which birthed 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 (Lichtenstein and Associates 1999:IV-34).

Following the consolidation of American Bridge Company's operations, a number of former owners and managers of bridge companies closed by the conglomerate re-established independent businesses in those shops. An example of this re-establishment is the case of the Groton Bridge Company of Groton, New York. Originally formed in 1877 as the Groton Iron Bridge Company, the company was absorbed into the American Bridge Company in 1900. In 1902, the American Bridge Company sold the then-closed facility to the former owners, who reopened the plant and conducted primarily a regional business (Mead and Hunt 1999:88-89). The Groton Bridge Company built bridges in Bradford County into the 1910s.

Bridge Construction Companies in Bradford County

The bridge construction companies listed below have built metal truss bridges in Bradford County. In some cases, the only information available about the company is the name. These names may have come either from a plaque on the bridge, or from PENNDOT bridge information.

Pittsburgh Bridge Company/Nelson & Buchanan

The earliest documented truss bridges in Bradford County are attributed to the Pittsburgh Bridge Company or its agent, Nelson & Buchanan. The Pittsburgh Bridge Company was established in 1878 and incorporated in 1881. The Pittsburgh Bridge Company was one of the largest bridge fabrication shops in the country. A county history from 1886 noted that the company's physical plant took up two acres of ground and employed 150 people. The company did structural work for buildings, as well as bridge fabrication (Historical Publishing Company 1886:131). The Directories of the American Iron and Steel Association from the mid-1890s list the annual shop capacity as 50,000 long tons (Darnell 1984:80). The Pittsburgh Bridge Company was one of the 24 companies merged in 1900 to form the American Bridge Company (Darnell 1984:85).

The Pittsburgh Bridge Company used the firm of Nelson & Buchanan as its agent and contractor. Nelson & Buchanan was established in 1883 by Thomas McDowell Nelson and A. Buchanan of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Under its arrangement with the Pittsburgh Bridge Company, bridges were prefabricated at the Pittsburgh Bridge Company's works and erected by Nelson & Buchanan. By the late 1880s, the Pittsburgh Bridge Company/Nelson & Buchanan partnership had established itself as one of the leading metal truss bridge builders in the state. Following the Pittsburgh Bridge Company's absorption into the American Bridge Company, Nelson & Buchanan continued as an independent company under the leadership of Thomas Nelson's son, Alexander Howard Nelson, and Edward A. Merydith, who joined the firm in 1901. Renamed Nelson-Merydith in 1906, the firm emerged as one of Pennsylvania's earliest builders of reinforced concrete highway bridges, and helped popularize the construction material with local road and bridge builders. Nelson-Merydith continued in operation through the mid-1910s (Lichtenstein and Associates 1999).

Lehigh Valley Railroad

Like all major railroads, the Lehigh Valley Railroad maintained a bridge unit that designed and constructed bridges and other structures. Such a department was a necessity when operating hundreds of miles of track. The Lehigh Valley Railroad was chartered in 1846 and given the name Lehigh Valley in 1853. Chartered primarily to haul anthracite coal, the Lehigh Valley Railroad completed its main line between Mauch Chunk and Easton (a transshipment point along the Delaware River) in 1855. The main line extended north to the New York/Pennsylvania border in 1869 and east to New York harbor over leased rails in 1875, but connections to Buffalo and Lake Erie were not realized until 1892 and an independent route to Jersey City would not be established until 1899. Once completed, the Lehigh Valley Railroad became a true 'Great Lakes-to-the-Sea' railroad, with outlets on both the Atlantic and the Great Lakes. The railroad was an important hauler of anthracite coal, while also servicing important industrial cities in eastern Pennsylvania, including Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton, and Wilkes-Barre. The Lehigh Valley's 'Golden Age' occurred in the 1920s, when the well-engineered, well-maintained railroad became the first in the country to double-track its main line with heavy rails. Its fortunes, however, declined along with the anthracite industry. The Lehigh Valley Railroad was purchased by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1962. It entered bankruptcy in 1970 as part of the Penn-Central collapse (Bryant 1988; Kalmbach Publishing Company 2000).  One of the bridges in Bradford County is a former Lehigh Valley Railroad bridge.

Groton Bridge Company

Founded in 1877 and originally called the Groton Iron Bridge Company, the Groton, New York company was the result of a merger between the Groton Separator Works, an agricultural machine manufacturing company and the Groton Iron Works, an iron foundry. Between 1877 and 1882, the company produced an average of 25 bridges a year. The following years were more productive, as the company secured contracts in 27 states. Its principal markets were New York, northern Pennsylvania, and neighboring states. The company reorganized in 1887, becoming the Groton Bridge and Manufacturing Company. Absorbed into the American Bridge Company in 1900, the Groton shop continued in operation for one more year and then was closed and dismantled. The former proprietors repurchased the shop in 1902 and, with new equipment, began business as the Groton Bridge Company. A contract to build bridges over the Erie Barge Canal bolstered company finances in 1906. By 1920, its bridge building business had diminished to the point that Groton sold its equipment to the American Bridge Company and went out of business (Lichtenstein and Associates 1999; Mead and Hunt 1999:88-89).

Owego Bridge Company

The Owego Bridge Company of Owego, New York was founded in 1892 by Ellery Colby, who had formerly been associated with the Groton Bridge and Manufacturing Company. Two years into business, Owego built the longest single span highway truss bridge in New York, at Mount Morris. As with Groton Bridge, the Owego Bridge Company's main markets seemed to be New York and northern Pennsylvania (Mead and Hunt 1999:95). The company ceased operations in 1917.

W.H. Gulick and Company

No information is available for this company.

Pennsylvania Steel Company

The construction of the 1904 Ulster Bridge is attributed to the Pennsylvania Steel Company. The Pennsylvania Steel Company was organized in June 1865. The following year it purchased land for its main production facility in Steelton, near Harrisburg. Operations commenced at the plant in May 1867. Closely associated with the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Pennsylvania Steel Company's first contract was to roll steel rails for the railroad, utilizing the then-revolutionary Bessemer steel process. In 1916, the Pennsylvania Steel Company was one of the operations merged to form Bethlehem Steel (Maley 2002).

York Bridge Company

Located in York, Pennsylvania, the York Bridge Company was a small fabricator of metal truss bridges and other structural shapes. In 1903, for example, the company shops consisted of a forge and machine shop with an attached engine room, an open crane runway, and a small detached carpenter shop (HAER 1995). According to Polk's York City Directory, the York Bridge Company was most active between the years 1902 and 1917, advertising itself as "bridge builders, iron and steel structural work, etc." By 1917, the company had changed its name to the York Bridge and Construction Company (Maryland Historical Trust 1978). It is not known when the company went out of business.

Montour Steel Company

The Montour Steel Company was a steel manufacturing firm located in Montour Falls, New York. No further information is available for this company.

United Construction Company of Albany

No information is available for this company.

Whittaker and Diehl

Whittaker and Diehl was a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania contracting firm that built primarily standard design concrete and metal truss bridges, mainly in Pennsylvania. Most known for their concrete arch structures, truss bridge examples are rarer but not unknown.

Whittaker and Diehl was established in 1908 by John Fleming Whittaker and David Leslie Diehl. Although he remained a principal in the firm until 1929, Whittaker also participated in the organization of the Luten Bridge Company of York, Pennsylvania. In addition, he was a principal of three other construction firms, each of which shared an office with Whittaker and Diehl and may have been its subsidiaries. These included the Ferro Concrete Company; Simplex Construction Company; and I.C. Shawfield Company. The Ferro Concrete Company was also a bridge contractor. Diehl, the other partner, remained a principal until his death in 1945, at which time the firm was dissolved (HAER n.d.:6-7).

Penn Bridge Company

The Penn Bridge Company of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, was organized in 1868 as T.B. White & Sons. At the time, they 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 (Bausman 1904:675). In the 1890s, the Penn Bridge Company's output averaged 5,000 long tons, ranking it a small bridge fabricator (Darnell 1984:80). 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 and two over the Allegheny, as well as the original Ohio River dams Nos. 2, 4, 5, and 6 (Pittsburgh Gazette-Times 1908:279-280). The date of the Penn Bridge Company's closure could not be ascertained.

American Bridge Company

The formation of the American Bridge Company marked an early twentieth century attempt to rationalize the bridge fabrication industry, a business plagued by price cutting, falling profits, and numerous bankruptcies. To maintain prices and profits, larger and more dominant companies had resorted to price fixing, pooling, and dividing markets. In 1900, 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. In 1901, the American Bridge Company became a subsidiary of United States Steel. In 1903, it completed construction of a huge fabrication plant at the company town of Ambridge, Pennsylvania. The plant's capacity was triple that of the previous record holder and was roughly equal to the combined capacity of the five largest companies bought by the American Bridge Company. Following its completion, the American Bridge Company transferred much of its operation to the modern facilities (Darnell 1984:85-86). World-famous bridges built by the American Bridge Company include the Hell Gate Bridge across New York Harbor (1916), the San Francisco Bay Bridge (1936), and the Mackinac Straits Bridge in Michigan (1957). The American Bridge Company also erected the structural steel for such landmark buildings as the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and the Woolworth Building (American Bridge Company 2003).