Staging the Tragedy of Time: Paul Cret and the Delaware River Bridge Author(s): Jonathan E. Farnham Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Sep., 1998), pp. 258- 279 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/991346 . Accessed: 02/08/2013 18:04

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

University of California Press and Society of Architectural Historians are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Staging the Tragedy of Time PaulCret and the Delaware River Bridge

within these which in the United Statesin the JONATHAN E. FARNHAM,Princeton University practices, began late nineteenth century, architectsencountered new bound- On 6 January 1925 in the Rose Garden of the Bellevue- ariesas well as new notions of boundedness.4By the beginning Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia, at the Delaware River of the modern period, the central problem of American Bridge (DRB) Third Annual Staff Dinner, Paul Cret, the architecturewas conceived in terms of links and limits;it was a Beaux-Arts-educated French architect and professor of design problem of bridging. at the School of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania, sat The prominent role of bridges in both the theory and at Table 16 with his collaborators, engineers Montgomery historiographyof the Europeanarchitectural avant-garde dur- Case, Clement Chase, Allston Dana, and Leon Moisseiff (Fig- ing this period is well known. For example, Le Corbusier's ure 1).1 During the evening the celebrants sang several songs essay "Esth6tiquede l'ing6nieur architecture"of 1921, re- from the "Third Annual Staff Dinner Song Book," including printed as the firstchapter of Versune architecture (1923), opens two specifically about the bridge. As might be expected of any with an image of Alexandre GustaveEiffel's Pont de Garabit eulogy of a bridge, the lyrics to "Song 23" evoked notions of (1884) (Figure 2). The bridge is presented as the apex of unity and connection: nineteenth-centuryFrench engineering and the herald of a new tradition. For Le Corbusier,the modern iron or steel There'sa long, long Bridgea-stretching across the RiverDelaware bridge was the foremost emblem of "The direct And unites the StateofJersey with our Pennsylvaniafair. technology. and immediate of the "mark[ed] As a monument of glory,of greatendeavor and of fame expression progress," bridge out the of civilization"and the toward a It willalways be connectedwith the BRIDGE COMMISSION's name. stages pointed way new architecture.5Like Le Corbusier's manifesto, Sigfried As the voices of architect and engineers rose in concert from Giedion'soperative history, Space, Time and Architecture (1941), Table 16, did Cret hear the harmonious bridging of antino- particularlyhis chapteron "The Schismbetween Architecture mies that he strove to concretize in his numerous collaborative and Technology,"turns on the bridge.6Giedion's story of the bridge designs? genesis of modern architectureis a tale of bridges and bridg- Paul Cret's designs for the DRB, the first of his many bridge ing that extended from AbrahamDarby's iron bridge at Coal- projects, as well as his theoretical writing on bridges and brookdale of 1779, the site of the separation of architecture bridging, provide a unique vantage point from which to survey and engineering, to Robert Maillart'sreinforced concrete the threshold between architecture and engineering.2 At the bridge at Tavanasaof 1905, the point of their reconciliation. end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth Claimingthat construction,"the subconsciousnessof architec- centuries, the relationship between architecture and engineer- ture," assumed precedence during the nineteenth century, ing was inextricably tied to changing conceptions of history, Giedion argued that a truly modern architecture emerged temporality, and modernity.3 While engineers and their tech- only when architecturereconnected, through engineering, to nological productions participated in defining the predomi- the present.7The embodiment of connection, the bridge was nant conception of temporality through the powerful notion championed as both the site and the metaphorfor this reunifi- of progress, architects, who lacked a clear link with progress, cation.8 were unsure of their relationship to time. Furthermore, these Like the European modernists, American engineers and uncertainties about the connections to both engineering and their apologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth emerging conceptions of modernity intertwined with more centuries asserted that bridges, unlike architecture,mirrored general apprehensions about shifting notions of threshold and also marked the progress of human civilization.They and boundary. With the rapid professionalization of both articulated a relationship between building and time that architectural and engineering practices and specialization situatedthe bridge at the nexus of a series of discourseson the

258 JSAH / 57:3, SEPTEMBER1998

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FIGURE1: Ralph Modjeski, chief engineer, Delaware RiverBridge between Philadelphia,Pennsylvania, and Camden, New Jersey, 1920-1927. Renderingby PaulCret, 1921

tween architecture and the present, and that the bridge of- fered the possibility of a pure, undifferentiated union. Refut- ing the commonly held view that architecture would become truly modern when it shed the burden of history, when it escaped the past and embraced the present, Cret contested the assumption that bridging inherently produces identity. In Towardsa New Architecture,Le Corbusier declaimed: "Let us listen to the counsel of American engineers."" In 1928, in an of the same title, architect Claude a consul- Viaducde Garabit(M. EzrEns) essay Bragdon, REVUEDE L'ANOtE tant on numerous bridge designs, likewise declared: "The DEL'INGtNIEUR engineer, forced to abandon all aid and comfort from the Old ESTHtTIOUE World and the past by reason of the newness of his material ARCHITECTURE (steel) and the novelty of his problems, and therefore subject Par LE CORBUSIER-SAUGNIER to no educational malpractice, has succeeded where the archi- FIGURE2: Le Corbusier, introductory page to the essay entitled "Esthetique de tect, taught only to lie and to steal, has failed."'12By contrast, l'ingenieur-architecture,"L'Esprit nouveau (November 1921). Included is a photo- Paul Cret urged architects "toward a new classicism" that, in graph of Alexandre Gustave Eiffel'sPont de Garabit across the in France, fostering a link between but also preserving the integrity of 1884. Truy.re novelty and tradition, extolled the productive nature of bridg- ing.13 Portraying architects as unaware of advances in technologi- physics and metaphysics of construction. Speaking for engi- cal culture and therefore disengaged from the present had neers, the mathematician, literary critic, and historian of become commonplace in engineering discourse by 1925 when science and technology Archibald Henderson declared: Cret began to call for a "new classicism." As early as 1869, bridge engineer Alfred Pancoast Boller had observed: "It Nowhere in the material world do we find so significant, so continu- would be an interesting, and perhaps a profitable speculation, ously enthralling an image as that of a bridge. From the dawn of to inquire in what manner the separation of the professions creation the bridge was-coeval with man, contemporaneous with the may have produced what is popularly called the 'degeneracy of individual, as with the life of the race, reflecting in all its minute and modern architecture.' "14Seemingly unable to develop a single countless changes the minute and countless changes of human civiliza- style for the modern age, architects wasted time proliferating tion. ... The whole meaning of progress is summed up in the bridge-at "degenerate" revival styles. Architecture, according to this once a daring symbol and a splendid reality.9 view, had slipped out of joint with time. By the second half of So confident were American engineers that one proclaimed: the nineteenth century, it had become anachronistic. "The formal title of the man who exerts a greater influence in "Is not our new leader an engineer, rather than a philolo- the civilized world at the present time than any other human gist or an antiquary?" asked Calvin Woodward, dean of the being.., .is The Supreme Bridge-Builder,-Pontifex Maxi- School of Engineering at George Washington University, in mus.10 1895.15 He continued, "The engineer is by nature an icono- Questioning these prevailing conceptions of the interrela- clast. He has small respect for the traditions. He snaps his tionship of bridges, architecture, engineering, and time, Paul fingers in scorn at all whose chief pride and glory lies in their Cret challenged two fundamental claims: that the schism submission to the 'tyranny of the ancients.' He cares less for between architecture and engineering betrayed a breach be- what he has been than what he may be. His triumphs, his

FARNHAM:PAUL CRET 259

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions masterpieces, his heroes, his golden age, are all in the future. BATTLING FOR THE BRIDGEHEAD:ARCHITECTS, He walks forward, with his face to the front; not backward, with ENGINEERS,AND PROFESSIONALBOUNDARIES his face to the past. .... The engineer makes precedents; other Proposals to span the Delaware River between Philadelphia, men follow them."'6 Buoyed by the cogent notion of progress, Pennsylvania, and Camden, New Jersey, date back to 1818.21 the engineer escaped the burden of history.17 Convinced of Investigations for the project that eventually succeeded in his authentic relationship to time, one engineer proclaimed: bridging the river began in 1914 but slowed during World War "Bridges typify progress more than any other structures built I.22 After the war, in the spring of 1919, as the project regained by man ... [and] the growth of bridge building seems almost momentum, architect Warren Powers Laird, a professor of biological .... The bridge engineer acts as agent in this evolu- design at the School of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylva- tion."1s By the beginning of World War I, the conception of nia and a consultant to the interstate panel charged with the forward-looking, future-oriented engineer and the back- building the DRB, issued a report titled "The Placement of the ward-looking, tradition-bound architect was firmly established. Proposed Bridge over the Delaware River."23 Although primar- The relatively new academic discipline of architectural ily concerned with determining the best location for the history was often faulted for the architect's apparent turn from Philadelphia bridge terminal, Laird instigated a fractious de- the future and relevance. Critics noted that the naive student bate between architects and engineers when he asserted of architecture, while studying architectural history, was apt to that an architect, not an engineer, should be charged with lose sight of history itself and deduce transhistorical architec- planning and constructing the bridge. Predicting that the tural principles from the architectures of distant times and bridge would be ranked "among [the] great achievements of places. In 1892 architect and critic Leopold Eidlitz observed: architectural art," Laird declared that the structure "invites its "The artistic branch [of architectural education] teaches builders to conceive it as a great work of architecture. ... This mainly architectural history. The student is overwhelmed with can be accomplished only if the monument is created by a a mass of architectural monuments ... [and] believes all monu- master mind in architecture working in coordination with the ments of the past to be perfect works of art. They are all best engineering skill."24 The bold statement sent shock equally indisputable precedents for future efforts."'19The sci- waves through the local engineering community. In response, ence of history, which was intimately linked with progressive the Philadelphia members of the American Society of Civil conceptions of time, was perplexing. While defining and Engineers (ASCE) countered that "the design and erection of ordering the past, it simultaneously rendered all past moments such structures [as the DRB must] be under the responsible available to architects in the present. These new pasts, brought charge of competent and experienced civil engineers." Issu- into the present, overwhelmed the architect. History itself ing a resolution in protest, they urged the governor of Pennsyl- seemed to blind the architect to historicity. As Henry Van vania to appoint "men qualified as civil engineers and not as Brunt, an early translator of Viollet-le-Duc and the first architects" to design and construct the great suspension American architect to write on bridge aesthetics, remarked in bridge.25 1897: As the dispute over professional territory raged in Philadel- phia, it coincided with a similar conflict in Pittsburgh regard- The cultivation of the mind through the knowledge of past achieve- ing the issue of whether architects or engineers were better ments has in fact rendered the architect of so to-day self-conscious, and suited to design and construct large-scale publicly funded has him with such a supplied multiplicity of conflicting ideals, that his bridges. In July 1918 architect Ralph Cram lectured to Pitts- inherent creative is weakened and his natural initial force is lost power burgh's art commission on the need to consider beauty as well in a sort of intellectual timidity and vacillation. With the distractions as strength and economy when designing bridges.26 Following furnished by his familiarity with history he cannot adjust himself to his the lecture,John W. Beatty, director of the art commission and own environment with the frankness and naiveti by which the masters professor of fine arts at the Carnegie Institute, began lobbying of the classic and medieval times developed architectural style. In this for architectural control of bridge design in Pittsburgh. In the respect the modern engineer enjoys a distinct advantage over his summer of 1919 the county planning commissioners of Pitts- brother, the modern architect. Fortunately in the practice of his profes- burgh, acting upon Beatty's recommendations, awarded con- sion he is not embarrassed these by grave distinctions, and his art has tracts for three large bridges to architects rather than engi- consequently progressed with the general progress of the century.20 neers.27 The unprecedented commissions were immediately condemned by the engineering profession. An editorial in the For American architects in the early twentieth century, history Engineering News-Record,the most prominent American civil proved to be an almost inescapable burden, and their stories engineering journal, speculated: "Is the architect competent of building bridges were always, in one way or another, about to design a large steel bridge or to direct its construction? If he carrying this load. is, surely the present-day science and art of engineering is a

260 JSAH / 57:3, SEPTEMBER1998

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions delusion and a mockery."28 Defending architects' forays into ing community.38 With no end in sight, the controversy bridge design, the heart of civil engineering, the American rumbled through the summer and into the fall of 1920. Institute of Architects (AIA) declared in the pages of the In early September 1920 the Bensalem Avenue Bridge in American Architect:"The architect to-day is becoming more northeastern Philadelphia, a 585-foot-long, highly decorated, than ever before the master builder and he is to-day slowly but three-arch concrete structure designed by engineers of the surely assuming his proper function as the dominator of every city's Department of Public Works, was opened to traffic.39The feature of construction, as he has in so many cases proven his Philadelphia Art Jury, the branch of municipal government ability to function as the head of building operations.'"29 that passed judgment on aesthetic issues in construction In January 1920, just weeks after the AIA portrayed the projects involving public funds or land, praised it as "one of architect as "master builder," the Pennsylvania State Art Com- the most beautiful [bridges] in America," but engineers dis- mission joined the fray with an open letter to Governor agreed.40 On 16 September 1920, just two weeks after it William C. Sproul.30 After denigrating a series of bridges for opened, the bridge was featured on the cover of the Engineer- their "pure cheapness," which had recently been constructed ingNews-Record.Inside, the article "Bensalem Ave. Bridge--An by engineers in Philadelphia, the art commission further Essay in Ornamentation" and the editorial "What Is Art?" infuriated engineers with the false claim that the "great bridges attacked the subjective nature of bridge decoration and, ignor- of New York have all been planned by architects." Insisting ing the fact that the bridge had been designed by engineers, that the "actual structural problem" of the DRB would be accused architects of arbitrariness: " [S] trength is measurable "after all but a detail" when compared with the complex and definite; beauty is neither, but too often only lies in the eye architectural dimensions of the project, the commission pressed of the beholder."".[T]he engineer's instinct for simplicity in for architectural control of the bridge.3' Again, local engineers bridge design," the editors of Engineering News-Recordsug- immediately objected. As a local front-page headline reported, gested, was indisputably sound.41 "Engineers Laugh at Architects' 'Ego' on Bridge Matter," The Engineering News-Recordcover story and editorial un- engineers dispatched their own resolutions to the governors leashed a flood of anti-architectural rhetoric. In a letter to the of Pennsylvania and New Jersey and the mayors of Philadel- editor titled "What Is Art?," Philadelphia engineer John C. phia and Camden.32 Portraying architects as artists, not con- Trautwine Jr. declared that the bridge "testifies to the unwis- structors, the municipal engineers declared "that without an dom of letting the architect perpetrate ... architectural disfig- engineer [to lead the DRB project] the greatest of architects urements" and demanded structures "unperverted by 'archi- would be paralyzed after he had made his first charcoal tecture.' "42 In the next issue, again under the heading "What sketch."33 Is Art?," Rudolph Hering, who had served as Philadelphia's Throughout the spring and summer of 1920, charges and assistant engineer in charge of bridges and sewers, "sub- countercharges circulated in numerous editorials and articles scribed" to Trautwine's harsh judgment of architecture, claim- in the popular and professional presses.34 Several local, re- ing that "the greatest beauty of form in a structure" was always gional, and national engineering organizations issued resolu- achieved "in the simplest and most direct way."43The AIA tions denouncing architectural control of bridge projects.35 In answered the engineers in its own column in the American March 1920 engineers involved in what was by then known as Architect,also titled "What Is Art?" Labeling Trautwine's letter the "Pittsburgh Bridge Case" requested that representatives of "unjust, misleading and in a certain sense pernicious," the the Engineering Council, a national consortium of engineer- editor of AmericanArchitect appealed to both sides to establish ing societies, meet with their counterparts from the AIA to "harmonious relations" between the professions and to put mediate the escalating conflict.36 Two months later a joint aside "petty jealousies" and "querulous squabbling."44 But committee composed of three architects and three engineers the contentious exchange of letters in the Engineering News- issued a report that insisted on the necessity of collaboration Recordand the AmericanArchitect continued into the winter of and concluded that "whether the engineer is chief and the 1920.45 architect associate or vice versa is an administrative detail of George Sydney Binckley's article "Art in Structures," which relative unimportance. Either combination should secure sat- appeared in the Engineering News-Recordin November 1920, isfactory results."7 Fueling instead of dousing the firestorm was offered by engineers more or less as an olive branch. raging between the professions, the joint committee's evasive Stressing the need for harmony, Binckley maintained that the conclusion reinvigorated the war between them. In a "man- function of architectural ornament was to soothe, not inflame, fully expressed resolution" replete with "manfully direct word- the joints of construction. Noting that the ornamentation of ing," the Board of Direction of the ASCE declared that the the Brooklyn Bridge was "a most perfect blending of engineer- Engineering Council, which represented the profession on ing and art," Binckley advocated a collaborative design method thejoint committee, had no authority to speak for the engineer- that would reconcile structure with ornament and engineer-

FARNHAM:PAUL CRET 261

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ing with architecture.46 Although the notion of collaboration ~t appealed to both professions, it left unresolved the conten- c ii' r ?5,\ tious issue of For t: rXI tr~ cr hierarchy. example, Binckley's cooperative ;z i L; :??? association offered reconciliation, but it gave priority to engi- r i~ i, ' ' neering over architecture. This question of hierarchy would ;'; .r~C~L; -~tra, -~~C;VP' ultimately be resolved in the broader realm of public politics. ; i ~Q~ii~ ;"- f~5~7r? ;? f! Warren Powers Laird, the Philadelphia architect who had ~V~3;J i" ~-gi9?-~ P:: ~E~ r\s instigated the Pennsylvania bridge controversies in 1919, con- ;, ~i ~? :i,,.:: ;;; ~jal' tinued to advocate the hiring of an architect to design the -- \.i a 8~ t ~~FJI DRB.47 In an letter in the Public .1.4~~:~Z t ?,xK:::s open Philadelphia Evening ?s s' 2:,C~ r ?rI '?1 'SI. on 15 he reiterated that the 2? .. u ri Ledger September 1920, "building ci\?~:!f It,3 i% x i of the bridge is pre-eminently an architectural problem."48 1?;1~? '? 'I Five days later, the Delaware River Bridge Joint Commission, ~ " j121.C4 '- P5~j, an interstate panel of politicians charged with overseeing the ~J. construction of the settled the of B~x '2*4c. bridge, question professional i hierarchy by engaging a board of three engineers, Ralph :r I?iT II? : Modjeski and his assistants George S. Webster and Lawrence i, ~;t-?~ ti .7, fl? ~?;r ~tLi " A. to lead the 'I: I?C:il Ball, project.49 : ..? L "~'~ it Shortly thereafter Paul Cret and his small architectural firm :~`"" ??. Jk P iJ' ?' were chosen to collaborate with Modjeski's team to ensure that Ii? the DRB would meet the artistic of escalating expectations ~i'-~~::i:..,.4~ S~y~l~p--~ll Laird, Cram, and others. A French national who immigrated to the United States in 1903, Cret had been catapulted to national prominence with his competition-winning design of 1907 for the Pan American Union Building in Washington, FIGURE3: Caricatureof RalphModjeski by an unknownartist, from the invitationto D.C.50 In addition to his private architectural practice, he also the DelawareRiver Bridge Fourth Annual Staff Dinner, held 6 January1926 held key posts on Philadelphia's municipal planning agencies and projects. He was a member of Philadelphia's ArtJury and breaking ceremony on a pier that would be demolished to its Permanent Committee on Comprehensive Plans-the board make way for the mammoth structure.56 When completed, in that coordinated the design of the city's urban fabric-and a time for the sesquicentennial of the United States on 4 July collaborator on both the Schuylkill River Embankment Plan 1926, the DRB was, for a short time, the longest suspension (1905) and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway (1904-1919).51 By bridge in the world.57 Cret's office continued to work on the the outbreak of the war he was renowned, at least in Philadel- bridge until the completion in August 1927 of the Delaware phia, as an architect of civic buildings and a city planner. In River Port Authority office building at the Camden approach 1914 he returned to France to fight in the trenches. During his to the bridge.58 wartime absence he was celebrated in the Philadelphia press as With the conflicts between American architects and engi- both a war hero and a master of civic design.52 In 1919, after neers centered on Pennsylvania's bridges, the collaboration of the war, he resumed his professional and academic positions Modjeski (Figure 3) and Cret (Figure 4) on the design and in Philadelphia. At the time of his appointment to the DRB construction of the world's longest bridge promised to recon- design team, Cret was working on preliminary designs for a figure the boundary between the professions. Coincidentally new building for the Detroit Institute ofArts.53 both men had trained in France at the two institutions that Soon after he was appointed to the DRB design team, in were often cited as representing the philosophical differences November 1920, Cret wrote to chief engineer Modjeski that between their professions; Modjeski trained at the Ecole des his "architectural studies and drawings of the Delaware Ponts et Chaussees in Paris until 1885 and Cret trained at the Bridge... will include the city planning features of the ap- Ecole des Beaux-Arts, first in Lyons until 1897 and then in proaches, the approaches [themselves] and the architectural Paris until 1903.59 By the time Cret completed his education, design of the bridge."54 Seven months later, in June 1921, a the stereotypical identifications of the two schools with the preliminary version of the team's technologically innovative rationalism of the engineer and the aestheticism of the archi- design for the DRB was made public by the Board of Engi- tect, while not accurate, were well established.60 neers.55 Construction began on 6 January 1922, inaugurated It is not surprising, given the circumstances, that Cret with parades through Philadelphia and Camden and a ground- began to contemplate the professional divide soon after his

262 JSAH / 57:3, SEPTEMBER1998

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions of a harmonic confluence of the fields. In 1927, for example, H. D. Eberlein declared the project "a case of sympathetic, ../r"* and tactful collaborationbetween ?.?Jfc' L??~ intelligent Ralph Modjeski, +%cr3' r, Ji~*? the chief and Paul P. Cret, the architect."" Corre- x*" engineer, J! spondence between Cret and Modjeski supports this claim. In t re ~bI a letter as the team was disbanded in z " ;e writtenjust design August I ?i declared: "I want to to what '3 1927, Modjeski express you great \C~ ----~ ~?-.r*~"- " C: pleasure it has been to have you as collaboratorinthe great work .~I i ,i ,; t r 1-.. -lr; .' 4 of the bridge. I feel it is largely due to your art that we have ""cC rr ;c~ succeeded in a of which we are all r building bridge proud."65 ;? - -?-;.-- .~-?? .?iJC! ii ???--,---c.,,. Cret replied: "It was a great pleasure for me to collaboratewith ;i' 5'-~C.lt+.-~r',?r~r?I~C~~--rn t It: your Board in the of the and I value L~' ?';~ study Bridge, very highly ?' ?~.'-rr.?ur------..,~* ^-r.i?t??*."i Jtr~' ?$`~-.i.-I ~? T -- ?-- ?Z ~~-^--cR ...~?? CT1 your commendation of my efforts."66 But what precisely did rr, ?=.T?,"l-...-~Z*-.~?'~~',~~:rZL1C_ ~~L~- ~~h collaboration connote to Cret? ?- -~ - ~? r. i. r. o'~ ~r? '? J ,,*~~ t?. ~'.- '.LZ~-?t ???~ ?? ,?- ~hiZ3 In an "The Architect as Collaborator with the ,rrh\?; I'-.j;.$ L'.r.~~ "T: essay, Engi- ~_-_I)?=.- -?I r?.-?I?.-~ I ~~??: ~I? neer," in 1928 in Cret ~i~,~~.r-?1;2?w'~'i'ru"~i~-lr;~=L'F?.?`"I~ ?i_. published ArchitecturalForum, expanded ~L.?~*7'~42~Cr~ ?~??: ~;;;;_".~;'L~f~,ff"??r~ 7?r-??.'c;'; -ri~cF i r??rl) on the theme of and collaboration that he had t~tc'~f.?~- bridging begun 4?t ?'fb~l~Et~ .~,c, ?'--"~? c?;irt. 2\. '"?~~;~J-~i*'"?":'r-~IY~:~~?j. to at the DRB. that was not ad- ~ic~,hprjrLur-C~ YC-llm:`, ?I.2:rYr~LtlLS~,: investigate Although design \t~L~ rrsns :C~FI~F.~CL)S~ dressed in the text until the final paragraph, Cret included c !~tr~hn.tt? -C?'iY*' sixteen renderings and photographs of the bridge (Figure 5).67

`3 Written in the emphatic and evocative language of a mani- festo, the essay offered Cret's hope for the reconciliation of FIGURE4: Caricatureof PaulP. Cret, from the invitationto the DelawareRiver Bridge architecture not only with engineering but also with the domi- FourthAnnual Staff Dinner, held 6 January1926 nant, modern conception of time. He identified "evolution (that is to say progress)," as defined by engineer-turned- appointment to the DRB design team. On 16 May 1921, dur- philosopher Herbert Spencer, as the force that had separated ing the most intense phase of the preliminary design effort, he the once unified building professions.68 Adopting Spencer's delivered a lecture titled "Modern Architecture," in which he thesis, Cret asserted that evolution is the constant, natural spoke, apparently for the first time, of "the divorce between progression from sameness toward difference. Citing the futil- engineering and architecture."61 In an essay published two ity of resistance to what he called the "law of incessant change," years later, he elaborated on his perception of a schism: the movement toward greater and greater heterogeneity, he argued for an architecture in with advanc- Where formerly one directing mind, at once artist and scientific con- agreement Spencer's ing, differentiating present.69 Most importantly, Cret advo- structor, sufficed (the famous architect of the seventeenth century cated a collusion of remembering and forgetting as the avenue would build indifferently a Versailles or one of those splendid bridges toward a new architecture that would be mod- we still admire), the nineteenth century has differentiated the two simultaneously ern and conscious of the role of in notion of functions. ... There is then a separation between these two branches of history any modernity.70 the building profession, which often collaborate, but often, too, ignore and mark four critical in each other. When there is this divorce between the two-it is the work Remembering forgetting points that suffers.62 Cret's essay. First, he observed that an "increased diversity of taste in planning and in the use of materials and the necessity In a subsequent essay on collaboration and bridges, Cret of directing a large staff of minor artisans and tradesmen force expressed his certainty of the significance of the Ecole des [the architect] to forget even such mathematics as he has Ponts et Chauss~es in the history of the relations between the learned in order to devote himself exclusively to the problem professions, declaring that its founding in 1747 had "signal- of aesthetics."71 For Cret, the expanding fissure between archi- ized the definite division of the hitherto united professions of tecture and engineering was inevitable; the passage of time, engineering and architecture into two distinct professions."63 the evolutionary movement toward what Spencer called differ- Despite talk of divorce, in numerous public and private ence, demanded that the modern architect forget that the statements, Cret and others identified the DRB as the site for a architect and engineer had been unified as the master builder new cooperation between the separate branches of the build- and accept collaboration. Next, he argued that the architect ing profession. Indeed in published accounts of its design and "cannot allow himself to forget..,. that the 'spirit' of steel is not construction, the bridge was represented as the embodiment the 'spirit' of stone."72 Steel, a modern material, is imbued

FARNHAM: PAUL CRET 263

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1) I L A FCH fTF(-T)R AL Ih\C1,NFFR ING3AN BUrS SS~e~aff4~HITRb~~Y I tleftit at by na tie' ntih t- tad uiti-timat attT ar OtIt Ntanzeisa e h t atOfdjireect fiaga-1 wjqtitI i awl pre!atdyn N•I 45< atath nttartaital]o~ eri e ,thahuat hn~i "Caale"tistt eitit tottt i ar~enaita eiaaaa ehttiitiht tia lea ca!inattebaath• Wa~iithei iii~ittt eathseeinaan• ei•

i lt int11actt011ir ft a ta v ttt ita eit t a. A1tattitj, l. eand a anw hataa

a theet riatgc at atantatii. t a t t0 t a teaa -'a he ear11 11.rwithav a a iit a a lane ''~Atea attattvaite..tAiIainia ta..taw ara.. ntteltatttttt .. atittanathttiatatan iitd t t attt~eaethi i aetw•t- atei a w• , t1ea•l, t ain1)iai t h d t i tat ai hatitint ita i [araaaeeaaat•iit tt!ta?•i i~~ iiI yte!at •,i~i•ttetata t e eelatt e at ata a !i•• Pathat aiIa Oatr tat alavetanal ce tale net \\ attanthe nat antetattit a a-a i (it) atiti iitttalt etaita -aai tati•; itZ i~ !• :• atttt ttt ~iw itti tta atiia, a actattn Atsi tlfw 11---ietatattfr -iod a-tat 1AVY jvia:S4Cst, i i

apt a a a - III

%atateie-aettaVe0

:::iiii ;•i :: :;:::::::::: : :riii.ii?;?;-i??:?- :?.iii??I;:•?i:• i:i~• "i ;i I:::!~iiii • •; ; •:i~ :i ! :i :i!i• ii••i

.:•? : 5 : : : ?? ? : ? , . ? ?. . . . ? ?? ...... ?

FIGURE5: Two adjacentpages from Paul Cret's essay "The Architect as Collaboratorwith the Engineer,"from Architectural Forum (July 1928). Note the juxtapositionof masonry andsteel forms in the layoutof the imagesof the DelawareRiver Bridge. with the spirit of the present, but stone, he claimed, houses the to the creative mind, every change and displacement that time spirit of the past. The architect must not forget that stone and and circumstance develop are elements that enrich rather steel as well as past and present are separate but linked. than limit the means of creation."74The architect must remem- Simultaneously embracing the spirit of steel and preserving ber and carry across time an awareness that it is precisely the the spirit of stone, the architect remembers that the modern passage of time, discernible only when the limit between one moment, the present, is singular but not autonomous. It is the moment and the next is acknowledged, that creates the possi- latest step in a historical process. Although Cret maintained bility of the modern. that the architect must remember fundamental differences, While maintaining that every new moment affords the he also asserted: "The architect must have no fear of simplic- possibility of novelty, Cret asserted that the past must not be ity; he must have the daring to sacrifice the facile common- forgotten as a distinct and constituent part of the present. The places of stereotyped trimming; he must be ready to forgeteven collaboration of architect and engineer generates a bond that the beautiful forms that stock his mental arsenal; he must have holds past and present together as it marks the difference the courage to eliminate-and eliminate."73 Architectural between them. At the same time, Cret declared that architec- forms of the past must not anchor the architect in the past. ture must not fold into engineering; even in a modern tech- The past becomes the past as such only after the architect has nologized society "the architect is not relieved of his task. forgotten its unimportant differences and created a new pres- Architecture remains an art."75 He insisted, "The architect ent. Expanding upon this notion, Cret, evidently searching for and the engineer must perform a sort of duo, each contribut- a new vocabulary, concluded that "it should be rememberedthat ing his share of special knowledge in the creation of a struc-

264 JSAH / 57:3, SEPTEMBER1998

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Thomas like Cret and so other architects a~-C:?i~ Hastings, many 'i:i;iii-?_ii'--i;i- -i-:i:-i--:i?iiiii~i:i--i:i:ii_:::::_: -ii and of the period, spoke of time in his essay "The -_ii:i:~~~:;-i:::'-;~-$-i~i'?::--'':'-i-? :-:: :: : :- engineers ::-:-:_:::: :: : Relations of Life to Style in Architecture" (1894): "What an ... : i: :::-:-::-::-::: ::: ::: - -~ Al inspiration there is in working for and with one's own time! :: :: : :: How much devotion there is when one's ideal is higher than anything that has ever been done! No matter how short we :j:-._--_-___ ?esj4;ql~_a*w;?":::'":"-'?--_~i~ii~~:s~-~-E~I may come of it, we are reaching forward instead of backward. We are carrying on and developing the natural course of things in a true historic spirit."Just as Cret would prophesy the evolution of a "new classicism" in 1925, Hastings anticipated a timely paradox when he called for "the dawn of a modern Renaissance, which, as has always been the case, will be guided by the fundamental principles of the classic."81But Hastings FIGURE6: The DelawareRiver Bridge engineering team at the ManhattanBridge, 18 was what Cret termed an "archaeologist."82 For Cret, the new November1921. Carrere and Hastings's arch and colonnade rise in the background. classicism would not be characterized by a nostalgic recollection Leftto right:consulting engineer Edward A. Byme,commissioner Samuel M. Vauclain, of forms but instead would derive from a dynamic integration andengineers George S. Webster, Ralph Modjeski, and Leon S. Moisseiff of remembering and forgetting, and past and present, achieved by the harmonic collaboration of architect and engineer. ture which is to be both a mechanical unit and an aesthetic In 1928, the year Cret's essay on collaboration appeared in unit."76 Cret's collaboration unified the two branches of build- ArchitecturalForum, Claude Bragdon emphatically rejected the ing but simultaneously maintained their difference. "archaeological" architecture of designers like Hastings, charg- ing that American architects refused to grapple with the novel NOSTALGIA, AMNESIA, AND ARCHITECTURE materials and programs that modernity had thrust upon them. Cret's notion of productive collaboration is illuminated by the "With few exceptions," Bragdon declared, "the 'triumphs' of critical debate regarding the relationship of the DRB to the American architecture are the triumphs of American engineer- Manhattan Bridge in New York City, designed and built be- ing;.., .the architect so far from seeking a new dramatic tween 1900 and 1909 by a team that included the architect expression for new building materials and unprecedented Thomas Hastings of the Beaux-Arts firm of Carrere and Hast- structural methods, has been (with a few notable and honor- ings, Ralph Modjeski, the DRB's chief engineer, and Leon S. able exceptions) a reactionary.., instead of pressing boldly Moisseiff, the DRB's design engineer. Considered the first forward in an effort to develop an architecture which is truly modern suspension bridge, the Manhattan Bridge stands indigenous and new, as is demanded by our unprecedented at the head of a technological trajectory that is linked with the problems and our modern outlook and point of view.""83 DRB and the great suspension bridges of the 1930s.77 While Advocating an architecture of amnesia, Bragdon dismissed the innovative technology of the Manhattan Bridge was widely Hastings's "reactionary" nostalgia-a condition that Cret in- acknowledged, its architectural merit was fiercely contested. sightfully described as "an impatient nostalgia for the familiar Some contemporary critics declared that it was "beautiful as past.'"" But Bragdon also rejected Cret's notion of collabora- well as useful," but the bridge's Beaux-Arts ornamentation tive remembering and forgetting. Of the architect who turned had many detractors, including the DRB designers (Figure 6).78 to the past, he declared: "Greece, Rome, Renaissance Italy, InJune 1921 they stated that "a comparison of existing bridges and medieval Europe will not help him. If he plays about in has shown that the most beautiful ones are not those where those fair and ruined gardens, he is only wasting his time."85 architectural decoration has been lavished."79 Cret also was Bragdon's characterization of the past as a garden is revealing. critical of bridge decoration, including the triumphal arch The garden was often evoked in modernist rhetoric as a and colonnade added by Carreire and Hastings in the late timeless realm of ornamental beauty closed off from all spaces teens, asserting that "the piers of a steel bridge are-the piers of utility and necessity. In rejecting both the garden and the of a steel bridge; to conceive them as a 'portal,' and so to past, Bragdon was by implication also rejecting the constitutive develop them architecturally as a Roman city gate, or trium- role of the past in the construction of the present.86 For Cret, phal arch, would be a fatal contradiction of their function."8oTo by contrast, boundary markers such as garden fences mark be in accord with the time, Cret argued, the architect needed to beginnings as well as endings. And like these fences, bridges, produce architecture for the present. To reproduce forms of the when conceived as links and limits, as landmarks, gather and past, to produce a steel bridge in the guise of a Roman triumphal frame antinomies and thereby create.87 arch, was tantamount to forgetting the present, to wasting time. Although Cret's notion of collaborative bridging, of linking

FARNHAM:PAUL CRET 265

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions and limiting, extended the possibility of reconnecting and In a revealing statement, Othmar Ammann, chief engineer of reconciling architecture with engineering, his 1928 bridge the George Washington Bridge (1923-1931)--a structure con- essay opened enigmatically: ceived in consultation with DRB design engineer Moisseiff- claimed that "the design of the suspended structure, the floor, There lurks in humanity, whose curious role has always been that of the and the cables, resolved itself largely in the application of destined antagonist of nature, a persistent dissatisfaction with nature's natural and most structural forms which neither re- inert obedience to its own laws; a dissatisfaction that is active and noble simple quired nor permitted architectural treatment to satisfy aesthet- in certain respects, and in others, foolish and blind,-the source of ics."92Ammann's conviction that the design of the suspended human power and of human weakness in equal parts. What, for structure was purely a matter of engineering derived from instance, is the paradoxical attitude of mind which combines a clear Moisseiff's innovations at the Manhattan Bridge, where he had perception of the laws of progress with a stubborn tendency to look applied the deflection theory to license a drastic reduction in backward, and to see in the past the ideal toward which society ought to the rigidity and bulkiness of suspension bridge decks by taking be-and is not-proceeding?ss into account the allegedly inherent stiffness of the cables.93 While recognizing the intractable law of progress, Cret praised Making possible the sleek, elegant, ribbon-like deck, the math- the urge to trespass. The architect, he argued, should neither ematical modeling theory was invoked in large part to justify acquiesce to the amnesia of pure utility nor surrender to the an aesthetic preference. It rationalized the trajectory for the nostalgia of pure recollection. Instead, the architect should art of suspension bridges that can be traced from the Manhat- strive, even if in vain, to exceed the limitations of each be- tan Bridge through the DRB to the great American bridges of cause, in the futile labor to transgress, limits are perceived and the 1930s.94 preserved. "Thomas Huxley once observed that Herbert Spen- With the deck and cable structure determined by the cer's idea of a tragedy was a 'Theory killed by a Fact.' But mathematics of the deflection theory and therefore beyond Spencer was not advancing a mere theory when he defined the bounds of art, modern suspension bridges offered two evolution (that is to say progress).... He was describing a fact.""89 points of intervention for the architect: the anchorages and For Cret, consciousness of time's progressive movement simulta- towers (Figure 7). But the architect's intervention at these neously rendered existence human and tragic. A collaborative points was strictly circumscribed by structural requirements.95 bridging that was not simply a blurring, that focused and pre- Therefore, the primary architectural problem in suspension- served limits, between, for example, fact and theory, or past and bridge design was not to shape individual forms but rather to present, actually constituted the essence of the human condi- articulate the relationships between forms largely predeter- tion. But the cognizance of limits that gave this gift of humanity mined by the calculations of structural engineers. At the DRB, concurrently poisoned it with the awareness of death as the Cret's task was to negotiate and articulate a reconciliation absolute, or end limit. Reflecting upon the same conundrum, between the oppositional systems of masonry anchorages and Friedrich Nietzsche had observed years earlier that "the human steel towers, "to harmonize the stonework with the steel being says 'I remember,' and he envies the animal that immedi- construction.'"96 But he attempted not only to create an ac- ately forgets. ... When death finally brings him the much longed cord between stone and steel but also to effect a reconciliation for oblivion, it simultaneously suppresses the present; and with between architecture and engineering, which "remain... in- this, existence places its seal on the knowledge that existence dividual, impenetrable to each other, yet indissolubly con- itself is nothing but an uninterrupted having-been, something nected, for good or ill.""' In bridging stone and steel, the that lives by negating, consuming, contradicting itself.""9For suspended structure of the DRB simultaneously holds not only Cret, if the abysmal gaps of human existence could be bridged anchorage and tower but also architecture and engineering, by architecture, the collaboration between architect and engi- together as well as apart. But Cret's metaphor-a connection neer was nothing less than the dramatic performance of the of the disconnected-extends further. human tragedy. Therefore, his designs for the Delaware River According to Modjeski, "anchorages are probably more Bridge, which united but did not merge architecture and difficult to design than any other part of the structure .... They engineering, must be read as a staging, a production, of the must remain immovable under the uplifting and horizontal tragedy of time-of the temporal and temporary.91 sliding efforts to which they are subjected."" Each 200,000- ton anchorage receives the two cables from the adjacent tower AN AGREEMENT OF THINGS THAT DISAGREE and redirects them downward over an H-shaped silicon steel A suspension bridge has four main components: anchorages, cable bent to a field of eyebars. The eyebars are secured to the towers, cables, and deck. Of these four components, architects reinforced concrete mass and, through caissons, to the bed- and engineers alike agreed by the 1920s that the design of the rock of ground (Figures 8, 9)." Clement E. Chase, the princi- cable and deck structure was strictly an engineering problem. pal assistant engineer for the DRB, described the anchorages

266 JSAH / 57:3, SEPTEMBER1998

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions T"T_:: -4-L,1 11 - -

NMI - iti---iii:IAC

--:77?7777, QW04":: pi77-757

~l~li: . -~ -:I ------I..i :J

s:nc

FIGURE7: Anonymoussketch of the Delaware RiverBridge, c. 1927.Note the juxtapositionof masonryand steel forms. FIGURE8: Sectionthrough the Camdenanchor- age,Delaware River Bridge, 1927

as "patient giants, passive participants in an endless tug-of- Cret's anchorage presents several memorable faces (Figure war."100Another observer noted that suspension bridges "may 10). At ground level, between the anchorage and the river- tug and pull with a giant's tuggings and pullings, and the bank, in the shadow of the bridge deck overhead, the cyclo- anchorages will remain fixed, solid as time itself."101 The pean granite giant appears as a colossal storehouse or tomb principal function of anchorages is to resist movement. In from a timeless past. Between the extended buttresses, below staging his drama, Cret, who understood that the architect's an enormous arch, a wall of smooth ashlar pierced with three task was "not to decorate, but to interpret--to clothe," sought openings suggests an ancient doorway and alludes to the to denote this function.102 He dressed each anchorage in a cavernous vault within the anchorage. From the narrow, rough granite costume, translating it from a concrete and steel crowded streets around the anchorage, a second face of mas- machine to a granite house. Transforming the technological sive, rusticated stone walls, with towers rising 180 feet above device into an architectural form that elicited as well as de- the pavement, exudes a brutal materiality and recalls medieval pended upon memories, he shaped an anchorage that resisted fortifications. High above the city, on the bridge itself, the not only the pull of the cables but also the passage of time. anchorage presents a third face that is scaled to humans. Atop

FARNHAM:PAUL CRET 267

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions roadway, thin steel walkways open at the anchorage onto granite alcoves with raised seating areas. Ornamented portals, -: -:::::::,,:: :::, bracketed by bronze lanterns, lead to elevators in the anchor- age towers, adding to the domestic impression. Protected from the wind by a high parapet, each open-air nook looks inward across the roadway toward its twin. Above the traffic, the stone towers, which from below resemble medieval bastions, appear as elegant pieces of furniture, even as art deco armoires (Figure 11). Although integral to the complex bridge machin- ery, the masonry anchorage has been transformed by the architect into a place of domesticity. It is a house for retention and protention, a threshold between Pennsylvania and New FIGURE9: Viewof the Philadelphiaanchorage, Delaware River Bridge, c. 1921.With Jersey, between engineering and architecture, and between the granitecladding removed, the cables,H-bent, eyebars, and concrete foundations what has been, what is, and what will be. of the anchorageare visible. In 1938 the architect Aymar Embury II, who offered the only substantive critique of the DRB, labeled Cret's anchorage the span, the rusticated rough-cut granite of the lower anchor- a "failure" and concluded that "it might be a magnificent age vanishes and a smooth-cut stone facade comes into focus. warehouse or a superb old fortress but it is certainly not an Moving up the open approach ramp and onto the anchorage, anchorage."103sUnwittingly Embury had discerned and then travelers are overcome by a sensation of entering a domestic dismissed Cret's intention. His clothed anchorage is, in fact, interior, a foyer perhaps. The view of the river and the city, both a warehouse and a fortress; it preserves and protects the which only seconds earlier was unlimited, is now closed off. art of architecture. Counteracting the force of the cables, the Sheltered by a screening wall pierced with fretted windows, grounding anchorage houses and limits architecture, prevent- commuters are ensconced in a granite room, open to the sky, ing it from sliding toward the river and dissolving entirely into 100 feet above the city. At the pedestrian level above the engineering and the present.

*ir

'r!rr 0.-

/Al

I:- :*:::44 ?A4: -:: _-::I: :::7- "Af,

FIGURE10: Paul Cret, preliminary design for Philadelphiaanchorage, Delaware River Bridge, 1921. In the finaldesign, the porchon the elevatortower was replacedby a sculpted coat of arms.

268 JSAH / 57:3, SEPTEMBER1998

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions p iiiiiiiiiiiiii~iiii~i~i~ii~iiiiiiiii~iii!i~iiii~i!!!i•1iiiiiiiii~~iiiiiiii!iii!ii~iiimii. "i. .. i i

. .. ,,,,~......

o wiiii!i~iiiiiiii~~iiiiiii!iiii

FIGUREI 1:View of the roadway, pedestrian walkway,and elevator tower from atop an anchorage of the Delaware RiverBridge, c. 1921

In the same essay, Embury illustrated two anchorage de- signs for New York City's Triborough Bridge (1936). The first, executed by an earlier design team of which Embury was not a member, closely resembled the DRB anchorage. Embury noted that this earlier design "didn't look to us like an anchorage for a bridge but rather like an 1870 Post Office unfortunately ::::::------: :a:: located in the flats, although anchorages of this type were quite the thing in the old days."104Discarding the first design, : ::::::::: ::: a:-: a of the : , : ~--;I _~---- - _i: Embury, along with engineer Allston Dana, member : ii - ~ii:_:: : -iiiiiiiiii:iii::-i:iiiii i i-ii-:::_r :: r ii: :: DRB executed a second scheme of --:. -I::--:--::iiiiiii-:-i::i---:-ii---i---i: :::::::::::::::::: i-i-::ii::1--:-ii~:_lil::::~: : ? :? ::i:::: -i-i~iiiiii-iiiiiiiiii-i-i:i design team, (Figure 12), : ::ii:ii- i--:i::- . :- _:: :------. :------:-- :-:-:--i : :-gi-: -: -:: - - : ':- : which they wrote: "We wanted our anchorage to look like an anchorage and nothing else. ... [T]his design was made with- out reference to any precedent--either architectural or engi- neering-solely to interpret the functions of the anchor- FIGURE12: Aymar EmburyII and Allston Dana, anchorage, Triborough Bridge,New age."'05 In asserting that he had translated function directly York City, 1935. Rendered by A. G. Lorimar into form, Embury claimed that his anchorage design eluded convention, habit, and the past. His architecture was strictly of age did, in fact, remember.106 It referred to aerodynamics, to the present; it was pure technology. Implicit in these claims streamlining, a science of movement that is counter to the was the assumption that the progress of technology was deter- function of the stationary anchorage.'07 Their unexecuted ministic and therefore, unlike conventional architecture, freed anchorage design for the George Washington Bridge, illus- from the burden of memory. But Embury and Dana's anchor- trated in the same article, reveals more emphatically the

FARNHAM:PAUL CRET 269

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions iii i i iiii?: -:i :::i-

:: ; :: ~:_ii----:i-l_~i?--iu_lliiiiid-iiiiiBS _~i::: ii~?aiiaiEiiii; :~.i--: !-:ii;-i: :: : :: .::.._ I:;: : : -: . ~ ::::. s?~~~-

liiii~ ':iiiii ::::. : -::-:-:i_:-:--i:--:_:::;:-?i?-:.::::::::::__. :?::::I:i::-?:.?"--"--:i---ni--~-:::::i-- :-::: :i:--:- -. .:.,:::::_:,i~: :-_-?i::--- -i:::_-e~__i-~?:::~_ ii----

r ?-ii:i-:-'_-: _.I__- - _

i•Ll!ii FIGURE 13: Aymar Embury II and Allston Dana, unexecuted anchorage design, George Washington Bridge,New York City, mid- 1930s. Lithographby John Richard Rowe

WPM MONO

ii- iii:i-i?ii•

•iii

FIGURE15: John A. Roebling,engineer, side and front elevations of a tower, Brooklyn Bridge,New York City, I870

.... paradoxical nature of memorializing streamlining in the ma- sonry housing of a steadfast anchorage (Figure 13). While attempting to seize the present through an appeal to an emphatically modern technology, Embury frustrated any claim of architecture to elude history and move with time. In fact, his anchorages unwittingly asserted that every construction marks a particular present and memorializes that moment for all time. With his designs for the DRB, Cret sought to dramatize this relationship between building and time. While the static an- chorages visually and functionally embody the construction's links to tradition, memory, and the past, the dynamic towers signify its tie to novelty and the present. Engineered by Moisseiff, the DRB towers were innovative in their use of both silicon steel and a cellular construction technique and became the paradigm for modern suspension bridge towers (Figure 14).108 Because of its inherent flexibility, this modern tower type offered an enormous advantage over older unyielding masonry towers such those of the Brooklyn Bridge (Figure 15). Standing firm, the earlier towers resisted change; they FIGURE14: Leon Hermant, model of tower, Delaware RiverBridge, c. 1925 were unable to adjust to fluctuations in the suspended cable

270 JSAH / 57:3, SEPTEMBER1998

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions and deck structures. To overcome this problem, nineteenth- century engineers employed a device called a rolling saddle, which was designed to bear the cable at the tower and to shift it toward the side or center spans depending on variations in loading and environmental conditions. Unfortunately, due to the enormous frictional forces within the saddle, bridges equipped with this unwieldy system were never able to adjust promptly to changing burdens. Instead, they retained their configurations for a while before convulsing into equilibrium as the frictional forces were abruptly overcome. Such a convul- :--Bi" sion, Modjeski recorded in 1923, had recently caused "consid- erable, though unnecessary alarm" at the Brooklyn Bridge.'09 By fixing the cables rigidly to the elastic steel towers in his designs for the DRB, Moisseiff overcame the flaw in the older towers. His steel towers flex like trees in the wind as they adjust lo?i=!i to changing conditions. "The total bending at the top of the ::?:i•:i::i towers," Modjeski explained, "will be 21? inches toward the main span and 1512 inches toward the shore under extreme conditions of loading and temperature."'11 As they adapt to their changing environment, the dynamic towers, unlike the anchorages, move with time. Furthermore, the powerful, stark steel towers of the DRB appeared to be free of architectural conventions. Their de- sign, the engineers asserted, was "purely a matter of practical engineering."'11 Unlike the masonry-clad towers proposed by Othmar Ammann and Cass Gilbert in the twenties for the FIGURE16: View of the tower pedestal,Delaware River Bridge, c. 1922.Note that George Washington Bridge, the DRB towers looked forward, the granitecladding of the pedestalmirrors the anchoragein the distance. not back."112Modjeski resisted the "temptation to disguise the real function of the [DRB] towers by covering them with shells economy it was desirable to have a slender column. .... From the point of masonry. Such shells, being useless, cannot be considered of view of appearance, the tower should present a wide base producing good engineering.""3 Cret concurred, declaring that the the effect of broad stability. The adopted profile balances well the static DRB towers "are not ashamed of being built of steel, and are and aesthetic requirements. ... Here again the good appearance of the not trying to conceal it under a masonry cloak."'114 bridge was obtained at the expense of some economy, and here again When the DRB's Board of Engineers submitted the bridge the results obtained fullyjustify the profile chosen."7 design to the Philadelphia Art Jury, they included only those sections of the bridge that they perceived as architecture: the While the towers of the DRB appeared simply as a product of plans for the pedestrian and automobile approach routes, the the latest structural engineering design technology, their de- anchorage, and the masonry base of the tower.115No overtly signers were, at least in part, guided by an aesthetic preference ferrous elements of the design were submitted for judgment for antique classicism, in which strength and the appear- despite the fact that the "monumental and magnificent towers ance of strength were easily fused. As they loomed over of heavy steel members were actually drawn by Cret and the the oldest sections of the brick and cobblestone city, the design approved by Ralph Modjeski.""6 Unlike the anchor- 380-foot-tall silicon steel structures projected an image of ages, which both materially and figuratively embodied stasis modernity. Opposite the traditional anchorages, they personi- and resisted change, the towers ostensibly moved both physi- fied the transitory present in Cret's allegorical production of cally and morphologically with time. But while the towers time. claimed immediacy, they were, of course, never entirely free of Projecting an image of modernity, the towers veil their convention or the past, even within their own set of assump- reliance on an ancient aesthetic tradition. With his designs for tions. Moisseiff himself noted: the towers, Cret countered the tendency toward forgetfulness, placing the muscular steel structures on granite pedestals that Longitudinally the profile of the tower was determined by consider- rise above the high water line in the Delaware River and ations of strength and looks. From the point of view of strength and mirror the rough-cut granite of the anchorages (Figure 16). As

FARNHAM:PAUL CRET 271

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions neering work together to produce one another."19For Cret, engineering was more than "a goad and conscience to archi- tects who were ... too prone to forget the realities of construc- tion and materials."'20 Engineering and architecture inhabit each other, and in this loss of identity, identity is produced; the new art of structural engineering is never "fully independent of architecture."'21 Late in life, in an introduction to Wilbur J. Watson's A Decade of Bridges,1926-1936, Cret quoted "a great engineer": "Large masonry arches are constructed out of the knowledge gained from existing arches. It is a matter of experience." To the great engineer's acknowledgment of the role of the past in the present, Cret added: "Without a solid basis of examples

i!!iliiii-ii:iiiii-ii iii• tested with their merits and faults our iiilii!!iii~iii by time, stimulating critical faculties and challenging our ability to go a step farther, modern problems would find us helpless. Engineering, like any other science or art, is a sum of past efforts much more than an individual Cret's was ...... --::!:l:li;'-: creation."122 "great engineer" fellow Frenchman Paul Sejourne, a chief engineer of the :::;-:i:.-;I des Ponts et and a at the Ecole des :-:-:-::-.{-.:: { ]:[ Corps Chauss(es professor • ...... Ponts et Chaussies. This was not the first time that Cret had let the engineer speak for him.'23 In 1931 he allowed Sejourne to articulate his intuitions about bridges and time: "Paul Se- journe, having designed his masterly bridge at Luxembourg

FIGURE17: Othmar Ammann, chief engineer, Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, New York City,1936-1939. The rendering,by A. G. Lorimar,depicts the bridgeas it looked :--ii~i:-ii:iji:iiii-iii~i?' }!::: beforethe staysand truss were addedin the early1940s. ::::::i: ;•2•~~~~~~~i:~i :i7•i?]:?:? ?}:? they stand midstream resisting the current and joining the flexible steel towers to the solid rock of the riverbed, Cret's pedestals call into question any claims of modernity liberated from tradition or, analogously, of engineering liberated from : ::li architecture. The for the DRB towers medi- ii~ii ii granite pedestals ii: i

i ate the static and dynamic as well as architecture and engineer- . . .. -- : :i::- ing, thereby opening a space for collaboration. Maintaining ::::::: ;: :::L ::. that boundaries such as the pedestals simultaneously link and limit, Cret asserted that structural engineering, a modern speciality, was constituted only in the collaborative embrace of architecture. Without architecture, engineering would be, as it had been, simply building. Like Cret, Clement Chase, the engineer who collaborated on the design for the "massive granite masonry," spoke of limits: "The proportioning of the mass was most carefully studied in relation to the design of the steel shaft of the tower that was to surmount it. As in all other parts of this structure, the attempt has been made to adopt that design which, within the limits of good engineering, would have the greatest archi- tectural merit."118 In collaboration, architecture and engi- FIGURE18: The Tacoma Narrows Bridge, Washington, in ruins,7 November1940

272 JSAH / 57:3, SEPTEMBER1998

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions S- i : : • /I : i : H :,•: : _ . . . : : • i~ •'? i: i :•i~i i •,, li i •1•11•:- 111 • i!•• •- ? : • i : : : • ..M .. i ? : - : • •I ii:: : : i::-! • i : !#i: : : /:• : : : ? ?'In ..,•i: ..: •?: • -••- -•" :I•:/ :, - to?

FIGURE19: An anonymousartist astutely portrayed the DelawareRiver Bridge as anagreement of thingsthat disagree for a 1922newspaper advertisement with its twin arches connected by the deck supporting the thing entirely new and strange, they were not new-they had roadway, found later that this same principle had been used in simply been forgotten."128 In an editorial, the EngineeringNews- the south of France during the XIIth Century. In his book, Les Recordagreed that "the difficulties encountered might have Grandes Vojites,can be found his terse comment, 'On croit been avoided if historyhad not beenforgotten." 129But architects inventer, on retrouve.' "124 For Cret, architecture stood at the and engineers had forgotten not only the history of failures nexus of invention and recovery. In his designs for the DRB, and the introduction of the corrective stiffening truss but also, he endeavored to invent and recover, to look forward and in their rush to the future, they had forgotten time itself. The back, to reveal the productive, tragic nature of antinomy. deflection theory enumerated a static analysis; it did not account for aerodynamic effects that occurred across time.130 AN AFTERTHOUGHT-THE UTILITY OF HISTORY The wind that destroyed the Tacoma Narrows Bridge gener- In the late 1930s two suspension bridges-Moisseiff's Tacoma ated an oscillatory motion in the supple deck that grew over Narrows Bridge (1940) and Ammann, Moisseiff, Dana, and time; the collapse demonstrated unforgettably that every pres- Embury's Bronx-Whitestone Bridge (1939) (Figure 17)- ent is linked abysmally, tragically, to distinct pasts and futures. advanced the trajectory that runs from the Manhattan Bridge Had the desire to collapse architecture into engineering to through the DRB. Stressing the deflection theory to its limits, forget history actually led to the collapse of the Tacoma and perhaps beyond, these designers stiffened their bridge Narrows Bridge? Bragdon warned that "in looking back the decks with sleek plate girders instead of bulkier trusses like architect is in danger of crystallization, [and] may turn, like those of the DRB. Ammann wanted his Bronx-Whitestone Lot's wife, to a pillar of salt."131Against this restricting view, Bridge to be "smooth, sharp, and clean," to be "devoid of Cret countered that "the paradoxical attitude of mind which extraneous architectural embellishments."125 Embury likewise combines a clear perception of the laws of progress with a boasted that "the very simplicity of the design of this [Bronx- stubborn tendency to look backward... [is] the source of Whitestone Bridge] anchorage carries out the 'feel' of the human power and of human weakness in equal parts."'132 steel towers and stiffening girders."126 In both bridges, architec- Many years later, in his introduction to Watson's Decade of ture collapsed into engineering. Bridges,he returned to this theme: "Where... collaboration On 7 November 1940 the sleek girders of Moisseiff's Ta- has been harmonious, you will find the most satisfactory coma Narrows Bridge dangled in the water, brought down by a bridges"'133(Figure 19). stiff gale (Figure 18). Following the collapse, the Bronx- Whitestone Bridge was quickly reinforced, first with a system of Notes stays like those used on mid-nineteenth-century bridges, and This essay was drawn from my doctoral dissertation for the School of then with a truss like that of the DRB to stiffen the slender Architecture at Princeton University and profited from discussions with Georges deck.'27James Kip Finch, a professor of engineering at Colum- Teyssot, Ralph Lerner, Guy Nordenson, Antoine Picon, Alessandra Ponte, and Mark Wigley. I am also indebted to Joan Ockman for the opportunity to bia University, provided an astute analysis of this memorable present a version of this paper during the 1997 Dissertation Colloquium at the bridge failure, recounting the wind-induced collapses of Tho- Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture, and to mas Telford's Menai Straits in 1839 and Charles Robert Bruegmann and WilliamJordy for their comments. Bridge, Wales, 1 The Third Annual DRB Staff Dinner Seating Arrangement, Song Book Ellet Jr.'s Wheeling Bridge, West Virginia, in 1854 and the and Program document the dinner. Delaware River Bridge Papers, Samuel subsequent introduction of the stiffening truss. In conclusion, Matthews Vauclain Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The Dela- ware River was he asserted: "In fact these long forgottendifficulties with early Bridge renamed the Benjamin Franklin Bridge on 17 January 1955, the 250th anniversary of Franklin's birth. show that while, to modern 2 suspension bridges clearly engi- In 1919, the year that Cret returned to Philadelphia after five years of neers, the gyrations of the Tacoma bridge constituted some- military service in France, American architects attempted to redefine them-

FARNHAM:PAUL CRET 273

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions selves. Perceived as artists, not constructors, they had been excluded from the in the Toronto area in the teens and early twenties. See Claude Bragdon, wartime building boom. The Post-War Committee of the American Institute of "Abstract Thoughts on Concrete Bridges," ArchitecturalRecord 53 (January Architects (AIA) attempted to reorder architects' priorities. The new "architect 1923): 10. is first of all a business man; second, a constructor, and third, a dreamer of 13 Cret noted that he had called for "a new classicism" in 1925. See Cret, dreams, or otherwise a designer," wrote C. H. Blackall, in "Architecture After "Ten Years of Modernism," ArchitecturalForum 59 (August 1933): 94. the War: IV-What Is an Architect?," AmericanArchitect 115 (2 April 1919): 481. This reading of Cret's theory and practice of architecture as an attempt to During this period, architecture's alleged shift from the technology of construc- reconcile tradition with modernity coincides with the work of noted Cret tion toward the fine arts during the late nineteenth century was frequently, if scholars Elizabeth Greenwell Grossman and Marc Vincent. See Grossman, The erroneously, attributed to the influence of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. For Civic Architectureof Paul Cret;and Vincent, " 'Natura Non Facit Saltus': The examples of this point of view, see Paul Louis Bentel, "Idealism and Enterprise: Evolution of Paul Cret's Architectural Theory," Ph.D. diss., University of Modernism and Professionalism in American Architecture, 1919-1933," Ph.D. Pennsylvania, 1994. Vincent also addressed issues of tradition and change in diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1992, 116-117. Cret, however, was "An Intense Impression of Modern Life: Paul Cret in America" (paper involved in many engineering projects. So numerous were his collaborative presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians, designs for power stations, heating plants, dams, trains, and bridges that an Baltimore, 18 April 1997). observer once noted that "Cret n'est pas seulement un artiste, mais aussi un 14Alfred Pancoast Boller, "Engineering Architecture," Journal of theFranklin constructeur et un ing6nieur de talent" (Charles Duval, "Travaux r6cents de Institute57 (May 1869): 320. M. Paul Cret," L'Architecture46 [15 March 1933]: 77). 15Calvin M. Woodward, "The Relation of Technical to Liberal Education," For a brief overview of nineteenth-century "scientific" history in the Proceedings,Association ofEngineering Societies 14 (April 1895): 362. United States, see the chapter "A Temporary Reassurance: Scientific History," 16Ibid., 361-362. The figure of speech, facing into and turning from time, in Ernst A. Breisach, AmericanProgressive History: An Experimentin Modernization was common. For example, Louis Gibson wrote: "The architect and the (Chicago, 1993). engineer stand back to back. The architect has the ages for his vista ... but his 4 See Richard Michael Levy, "The Professionalization of American Archi- vision is blinded and he sees no more after the sixteenth century. The engineer tects and Civil Engineers, 1865-1917," Ph.D. diss., University of California, has his face turned the other way. His inspiration is the future. The past does Berkeley, 1980. not cloud his brain" (Gibson, "Art and Engineering," American Architectand 5 Le Corbusier, Towardsa NewArchitecture, trans. Frederick Etchells (London, Building News 84 [28 May 1904]: 71). 1927), 17. First published as "Esth6tique de l'ing6nieur architecture," L'Esprit 17 On the historical relationships between theories of technological change nouveau 11/12 (November 1921): 1328-1335. Not surprisingly, Cret, who often and theories of history, see Merrit Roe Smith and Leo Marx, Does Technology quoted Le Corbusier, owned a copy of Vers une architecture.See Elizabeth Drive History?: The Dilemma of TechnologicalDeterminism (Cambridge, Mass., Greenwell Grossman, The Civic Architectureof Paul Cret(Cambridge, 1996), 254 1994). n. 46. 18Charles S. Whitney, Bridges:A Study in TheirArt, Scienceand Evolution (New 6See Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture:The Growth of a New York, 1929), 23. Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., 1941), 147-152. Giedion's schism thesis was 19 Leopold Eidlitz, "The Vicissitudes of Architecture," ArchitecturalRecord 1 initially developed in his 1928 book Bauen in Frankreich,Bauen in Eisen, Bauen in (1891/1892): 477-479. In the late nineteenth century, Eidlitz, Henry Van Eisenbeton;see Giedion, Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferrocon- Brunt, Montgomery Schuyler, and others posited a correlation between an crete,trans. J. Duncan Berry (Santa Monica, 1995), 94-96. Giedion placed a architectural pedagogy based upon the study of historical forms and the failure photograph by Liszl6 Moholy-Nagy of Ferdinand Arnodin's Pont Transbor- of architects to create a style for the present. deur in Marseilles of 1905 on the cover of Bauen in Frankreichand an image of 20 Henry Van Brunt, in a discussion ofJ. A. L. Waddell, "Elevated Railroads" Othmar Ammann's Randall's Island Interchange of the Triborough Bridge in (1897), in John Lyle Harrington, ed., The Principal Papers ofDr J. A. L. Waddell, NewYork City of 1936 on the dust jacket of Space, Timeand Architecture. Civil Engineer (New York, 1905), 761. Waddell, one of the most prominent 7 Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture,117. bridge engineers in the United States, was an early consultant to the DRB 8 On the notion of the bridge as site and metaphor, see the proceedings of a project. Van Brunt was the first to translate into English Viollet-le-Duc's symposium held by the Building Arts Forum/New York, Deborah Gans, ed., Entretiens sur l'architecture;see Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Discourses on Bridging the Gap: Rethinking the Relationship of Architectand Engineer (New York, Architectureof Eugne-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc,trans. Henry Van Brunt (Boston, 1991). 1875). He also wrote the first important essay on bridge aesthetics by an 9 Archibald Henderson, "In Praise of Bridges," Harper's Monthly Magazine American architect. See Henry Van Brunt, "A Letter on the Aesthetics of 121 (November 1910): 925-927. The notion that bridges made progress Bridge Construction," in J. A. L. Waddell, De Pontibus: A Pocket-Bookfor Bridge manifest was common in the engineering discourse of the late nineteenth and Engineers (New York, 1898), 40-45; reprinted in Waddell, Bridge Engineering, early twentieth centuries. For example, Frank Koester, a German city planner 2:1151-1154. who lived and worked in the United States, wrote: "Of all the structures 21 On the prehistory of the DRB, see Delaware River Bridge Joint Commis- erected, the bridge is possessed of the greatest individuality, unity and feeling. It sions of the States of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Final Report of the Board of is at once an inspiration and a utility, and it marks as no other structure does Engineers (Burlington, N.J., 1927), 5; Charles Carswell, The Building of the the progress of man from barbarism to civilization" (Koester, Modern City Delaware River Bridge (Burlington, N.J., 1926); "Historical Background," in Planning and Maintenance [New York, 1914], 98). See also K. Waule, "The Delaware River Bridge Joint Commission of the States of Pennsylvania and Bridge as a Test of Civilization," ScientificAmerican Monthly 3 (March 1921): NewJersey, Delaware River Bridge Twenty-FifthAnniversary, 1951 (Philadelphia, 201-204. Two recent publications explore the linkage between bridges and 1951), 19-24; Walter S. Andariese, History of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge progress: Richard Margolis, Bridges:Symbols ofProgress (Hamilton, N.Y., 1991); (Camden, 1981). For a bibliography of the writings on the numerous attempts P. and Philip Mason, The AmbassadorBridge: A Monument to Progress(Detroit, to span the Delaware at Philadelphia, see "Philadelphia-Camden Bridge," in 1987). A. A.Jakkula, ed., "A History of Suspension Bridges in Bibliographical Form," 10E. C. Gardner, "The Architecture of Bridge Building," EngineeringMaga- Bulletin of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas 12 (1 July 1941): zine 11 (August 1896): 844. 289-294. 1 Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture,42; first published as "Trois 22Between 1906 and 1920, architect Joseph Huston promoted numerous Rappels AMM. Les Architectes, 2e Article," L'Esprit nouveau 2 (November projects to span the Delaware River at Philadelphia. His extravagant bridge 1920): 195-199. designs combined cantilever or suspension spans with enormous skyscrapers. 12Claude Bragdon, "Towards a New Architecture," Outlook148 (15 Febru- Huston, who wasjailed during the teens for defrauding the State of Pennsylva- ary 1928): 246. Ostensibly a review of Thomas E. Tallmadge's The Story of nia while designing a new state capitol building, was never seriously considered Architecturein Americaand Le Corbusier's Towardsa New Architecture,Bragdon's to design the bridge. While Huston played no official role on the bridge, the article all but ignores these books for his own preoccupations. Bragdon nationally known engineerJ. A. L. Waddell of Chicago was retained to execute collaborated with Canadian engineer Frank Barber on several concrete bridges preliminary plans. On 26June 1917 Waddell issued his "Preliminary Report

274 JSAH / 57:3, SEPTEMBER 1998

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions and Estimate of Cost of Delaware River Bridge Between Philadelphia and ingNews-Record84 (11 March 1920): 544. Camden"; five months later, on 17 November 1917, he issued his pendant 37The report was reprinted in "Council Committee Reports on Pittsburgh "Report of Estimate of Cost on Two Tunnels under the Delaware River Bridge Case," EngineeringNews-Record84 (27 May 1920): 1079. Between Philadelphia, Penn. and Camden, N.J." Waddell proposed an eyebar 38The resolution by the Board of Direction of the ASCE condemning the suspension bridge with unorthodox spiral approaches. Both reports were joint committee was published in "American Society Takes Issue with Council published as J. A. L. Waddell, Report to the Delaware River Bridge and Tunnel in Pittsburgh Bridge Case," Engineering News-Record84 (10 June 1920): Commissionon the ProposedBridge and Tunnel Between the Cities of Camden and 1175-1176. The assessment of the resolution as "manful" was asserted in Philadelphia (Camden, 1918). The legislation granting authority to fund and "Speaking for the Profession," EngineeringNews-Record84 (10 June 1920): 1134. build the bridge during the teens is detailed in the booklet The DelawareRiver Other condemnations of the joint committee's findings appeared in "An BridgeLinking Philadelphia and Camden:Authorized by Acts of the Pennsylvania and Unresponsive Answer," Engineering News-Record84 (27 May 1920): 1038; and New JerseyLegislatures and Ordinances of the Philadelphia City Council (Camden, "Consulting Engineers Reaffirm Their Stand on Bridge Design by Architects," 1921). EngineeringNews-Record 84 (17June 1920): 1223. Francis C. Shenehon, one of 23 Laird had recruited Paul Cret and brought him from Paris to teach at the the three engineers on the joint committee, attempted to rationalize his role university in 1903. See David Van Zanten, "Le Systime des Beaux-Arts," on the condemned panel, in Francis C. Shenehon, "Crossover Practice: An ArchitecturalDesign Profile17 (1979): 70. Argument on the Issues of the Pittsburgh Bridge Case," EngineeringNews-Record 24 Warren Powers Laird, "The Placement of the Proposed Bridge over the 84 (24June 1920): 1254. Delaware River Between the Cities of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Camden, The question of whether architects or engineers were better suited to design NewJersey" (1919), 16. Documentation of Laird's work on the DRB project is large public bridges resurfaced in Pittsburgh in 1923 when John W. Beatty in housed Warren Powers Laird Collection, Architectural Archives, University demanded that the proposed 6th, 7th, and 9th Street bridges be designed by an of Pennsylvania. architect. The three suspension bridges were eventually erected by engineer 25 See "Engineers Request Experts Be Put on Bridge Commission," Philadel- V. R. Covell in collaboration with architect Stanley L. Roush. See "Architects' Public phia Ledger,24 November 1919, p. 3. Bridge Design Again Under Discussion," Engineering News-Record91 (26 July 26 Cram's lecture of 10 July 1918 was summarized in "Pittsburgh Urged to 1923): 155, 157; "Bridge Design Dispute Initiated by Architects," Engineering Plan AmericanArchitect 114 Now," (17July 1918): 80. News-Record91 (2 August 1923): 195; and "Engineers for Bridges," Engineering 27 The Allegheny County Commissioners retained Benno Janssen for the News-Record91 (16 August 1923): 251. The collaboration was discussed in 40th Street Alden & Harlow Bridge, for the Monongahela River Bridge, and Stanley L. Roush, "The Sixth, Seventh and Ninth Street Bridges, Pittsburgh, Warren and Wetmore for the 16th Street Bridge over the Allegheny River. See PA.," AmericanArchitect 133 (5 February 1928): 191-196. "Architects AmericanArchitect Design Pittsburgh's Bridges," 115 (25June 1919): 39 On the Bensalem Avenue Bridge, see "Bensalem Ave Bridge--An Essay in 886; and "Pittsburgh Asks Architects' Aid in Designing Bridges," Engineering Ornamentation," Engineering News-Record85 (16 September 1920): 559-561; News-Record82 1180. (12 June 1919): John W. Beatty reported Cram's lecture "Bensalem Bridge to Open," Philadelphia Public Ledger,28 August 1920, p. 3; and his successful to lobbying his allies at the Philadelphia ArtJury. SeeJohn W. and "Elaborate Concrete Bridge for Philadelphia Park," Engineering News 75 Beatty to Andrew Wright Crawford, Secretary of the Philadelphia Art Jury, 7 (29June 1916): 1248-1249. June 1919, Fairmount Park Art Association Collection, Historical Society of 4o0Annual Reportof theArtJury (Philadelphia, 1920), 18. Pennsylvania. Note that BennoJanssen was a member of the competition jury 41 "What Is Art?" EngineeringNews-Record 85 (16 September 1920): 531. that selected Cret's design for the Indianapolis Public Library in 1914. 42John C. Trautwine Jr., "What Is Art?" Engineering News-Record85 (23 28 "What of the Public Safety in Pittsburgh?" Engineering News-Record83 September 1920): 619. October 686. (9 1919): 43Rudolph Hering, "What Is Art?" Engineering News-Record85 (30 Septem- 29 "A Better Inter-Professional Relation Needed," American Architect 116 ber 1920): 670. Born in Philadelphia, Hering, by 1867, had trained as a civil (31 December 1919): 814. On the AIA Post-War Committee, see n. 2. engineer at the Royal Polytechnical School in Dresden. His thesis was titled 30Cret's associate Clarence Zantzinger was a member of the Pennsylvania "Aesthetics Applied to Bridge Design." From 1876 to 1880 he worked for the State Art Commission. city of Philadelphia with George S. Webster as the assistant engineer in charge 31 The letter was reprinted and abstracted in numerous Philadelphia newspa- of bridges and sewers. pers, including "The Art Commission Warns Against Bridge Errors," Philadel- 44 "What Is Art?" AmericanArchitect 118 (20 October 1920): 501-502. phia Public Ledger,26January 1920, p. 9; "Ask for Architect to Design Bridge," 45Two letters-N. H. Holmes, "What Is Art?-A Defence of the Architect," 26 Philadelphia Inquirer, January 1920, p. 2; "Beauty in Bridge, Art Board's EngineeringNews-Record 85 (21 October 1920): 810, and S. S. McKay, "What Is Plea," Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger,26 January 1920, p. 9. The issue was Art?-A Defence of the Architect," Engineering News-Record85 (21 October then picked up by the national engineering press. See "Wants Architects to 1920): 810-were reprinted in "What Is Art?" AmericanArchitect 118 (3 Novem- Control Delaware News-Record84 Bridge," Engineering (29January 1920): 250. ber 1920): 568, 572. The exchange also included George E. Dorman, "The 32 "Engineers Laugh at Architects' 'Ego' on Bridge Matter," Philadelphia Worm Turns," EngineeringNews-Record85 (18 November 1920): 1006; and F. H. Public Ledger,29January 1920, p. 1. Frankland, "What Is Art?" EngineeringNews-Record85 (2 December 1920): 1105. 33The resolution of the of Society Municipal Engineers was reprinted in 46George Sydney Binckley, "Art in Structures," Engineering News-Record85 "Why Engineers Should Be Put in Charge of Big Bridges," Engineering News- (25 November 1920): 1025. Record84 (26 February 1920): 435-436. 47See, for example, Warren Powers Laird, "The Placement of the Delaware 34See, for example, "More About the Bridge," Philadelphia Evening Public River Bridge," Journal of the Engineers' Club of Philadelphia 36 (June 1919): Ledger,30 January 1920, p. 10; John Irwin Bright, "Should Bridge Builder Be 209-219. Engineer or Architect?," Philadelphia Public Ledger, 29 February 1920, p. 4; 48Warren Powers Laird, "Dr. Warren P. Laird on the Delaware River Clarence W. Brazer, "Favors Bridge Competition," Philadelphia Public Ledger,6 Bridge," PhiladelphiaEveningPublic Ledger,15 September 1920, p. 8. March 1920, p. 8, reprinted as "Architectural Aspects of Bridge Building," 49The three engineers were named to the board on 24 September 1920. See American Architect117 (7 April 1920): 438; "Open Competition for Delaware "Engineers Named by Bridge Body," Philadelphia Public Ledger,25 September River Bridge Suggested," EngineeringNews-Record 84 (18 March 1920): 596. 1920, p. 3; "3 Engineers Named for Bridge Project," Philadelphia Inquirer, 25 35The dissenting organizations included the Engineers' Club of Philadel- September 1920, p. 2; "Engineering Board Appointed for Delaware River phia, the Engineers' Society of Western Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh and Bridge," American Architect118 (27 October 1920): 554; and "Philadelphia- Philadelphia chapters of the ASCE, and the American Institute of Consulting Camden Bridge Study Makes Progress," EngineeringNews-Record 85 (2 Decem- Engineers. See, for example, "Resolutions of Pittsburgh Engineers on Bridge ber 1920): 1108. Webster had served the city of Philadelphia for more than four Design by Architects," EngineeringNews-Record 84 (29January 1920): 223; and decades and had headed the design team of the much maligned Bensalem "Engineer Societies Resent Art Commission's Aspersion," Engineering News- Avenue Bridge. Ball was an engineer from NewJersey. Design engineer Leon Record84 300. (5 February 1920): Moisseiff, the leading American theoretician of the computational analysis of Civils 36See "Pittsburgh Say Architects Should Not Design Bridges," Engi- suspension bridges, and principal assistant engineer Clement E. Chase, among neer-

FARNHAM:PAUL CRET 275

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions others, were appointed on 29 September1920. EngineerAllston Dana did not Windsor,Ontario, by the architecturalfirm of Smith,Hinchman and Gryllsand join the team until September1921. engineers JonathanJones and Leon Moisseiff,design engineer of the DRB, 50 On Cret's Pan American Union Building, designed and constructed in broke the recordwith a span of 1,850 feet. See Mason, TheAmbassador Bridge. collaborationwith Philadelphia architect Albert Kelsey between 1907 and 1910, The completed bridge was the subject of numerous reports. See, for see "The Pan AmericanUnion BuildingCompetition: A Lesson in Beaux-Arts example, Clement E. Chase, "The DelawareRiver Bridge," American Architect Design," in Grossman, CivicArchitecture, 26-64. 131 (5 March 1927): 329-335; and Harold Donaldson Eberlein, "The Dela- 51 George S Webster,one of the three members of the Board of Engineers, ware RiverBridge Between Philadelphiaand Camden,"Architectural Record 61 had worked with Cret on numerous occasions. For example, Webster,the (January1927): 1-12. The historyof the bridgesubsequent to its completionis directorof the Boardof Surveysof Philadelphia'sDepartment of PublicWorks delineated in DRB Joint Commissions, DRB Twenty-FifthAnniversary; Jack Cur- from 1892 to 1916, was an ex officio member of the Art Jury and the tin, "The Story of a Bridge, 1926-1966," Ports of Philadelphia Magazine (June PermanentCommittee on ComprehensivePlans. On Cretand the parkway,see 1966): 17-20; and Andariese, History of the BenjaminFranklin Bridge. David B. Brownlee, Building the CityBeautiful: TheBenjamin Franklin Parkway and 58The end of Cret's tenure on the bridge project on 31 August 1927 is thePhiladelphia Museum ofArt (Philadelphia, 1989). documented by letters between Modjeskiand Cret. Ralph Modjeskito Paul 52Cret's military career was outlined in dozens of articles in Philadelphia Cret; Paul Cret to Ralph Modjeski,31 August 1927, Paul P. Cret Collection, newspapersbetween 1914 and 1919. The city considered asking the French Athenaeumof Philadelphia. government to release Cret from military duty in 1918 so that he might 59On Modjeski,see FrankM. Masters,"Memoir of RalphModjeski," Trans- continue his city-planningprojects. The article "Art and Artists and War actions of the American Societyof Engineers 106 (1941): 1624-1628; and "Ralph Memorial,"Philadelphia Public Ledger, 24 November 1918, p. 18, showcased Modjeski," Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences23 (1945): sketchesfor Philadelphia'sRittenhouse Square that Crethad executed "in the 243-261. trenches" and also proposed that the soldier-architectdesign the Delaware 60On the relationshipsbetween French engineers and architects in the RiverBridge as a warmemorial. The citywelcomed the "hero-architect"home eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see, respectively,Antoine Picon, French on 1 April 1919. See, for example, "Penn ProfessorFirst over Rhine,"Philadel- Architectsand Engineers in the Age of Enlightenment, trans. Martin Thom (Cam- phia Public Ledger,2 April 1919, p. 3. bridge, 1992); and H6lkne Lipstadtand Harvey Mendelsohn, Architecteand 53On Cret'sDetroit Instituteof Arts, designed and constructedin associa- inginieur dans la presse:polnmique, dtbat, conflit (Paris, 1980). More generally, see tion with Borie & between 1919and 1927,see "The Detroit Antoine Picon, "Introduction," to L'Art de Zantzinger, Medary l'inginieur: constructeur,entrepreneur, Institute of Arts:The Art Museum between Historyand Pleasure,"in Gross- inventeur,ed. Antoine Picon (Paris,1997), 22-40. man, CivicArchitecture, 102-139. The schism is identified with the founding of the Ecole des Ponts et 54Paul Cret to RalphModjeski, 26 November1920, Paul P. Cret Collection, Chauss6esin 1747. Peter Collinsnoted "thatabout 1750 a divisiontook place Athenaeumof Philadelphia. between the two professions.Before 1750 no one would have questioned the 55A statusreport was issued by the Boardon 15 April1921; see "Philadelphia- advisabilityof appointing architectsto design bridges, or suggested that the Camden Bridge to Have Clearanceof 135 Ft," EngineeringNews-Record 86 (28 design was the responsibilityof any other type of person" (Collins, Changing April 1921): 740. The preliminary design of June 1921 was published as Ideals in Modern Architecture[London, 1965], 185). Giedion associated the DelawareRiver BridgeJoint Commission of the Statesof Pennsylvaniaand New disciplinarybreak with the French Revolutionand the creation of the Ecole Jersey, Final Reportof the Board of Engineers(Burlington, N.J., 1921). The bridge Polytechniquein 1794. "The separateexistence of an Ecole des Beaux-Artsand design appearedon the front page of everylocal newspaperon 10June 1921.A Ecole Polytechniquein itself points to the schism between architectureand cartoon of Ben Franklinastride the bridge above the caption "DreamsDo construction" (Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture,147). Come True" represented the public sentiment; see PhiladelphiaInquirer, 12 Often the schismwas characterizedas a split between engineering and art June 1921, p. 1. During the summer of 1921 the bridge was also widely rather than architecture.Architecture was then perceived as the vehicle for publicizednationwide in the popularand professionalpresses. After the design reconcilingbeauty and utility,aesthetics and construction,and artand engineer- was presented by the Board of Engineersin June 1921, public forums on the ing. See CharlesH. Driver,"Engineering and Art," VanNostrand's Engineering bridgewere held for severalweeks. The most contentiousissue debated during Magazine20 (June 1879): 487: "CanEngineering and Art be united, and if so, these meetingswas not the design itselfbut the location of the bridge. how?My answer is, yes, and by means ofArchitecture;for though, as I havesaid, 56The ground-breakingceremonies were reported extensivelyin the local Architectureis to be consideredthe child of Engineering,yet it is through the press on 6 and 7January 1922;see, for example, "SpecialSection on Bridge graces of that child that we must hope to again reconcile and unite Art with Ceremonies," PhiladelphiaEveningPublic Ledger,6January 1922, pp. 20-22. The engineering. I say 'again reconcile,' for in the old daysArt and Engineering final design of the bridge is best documented in DRBJoint Commission,Final were united, and Architecturewas their offspring.We moderns have divorced Reportof 1927. In addition to the final engineers' report,contract drawings for them; let us re-unitethem." everyaspect of the bridgewere issuedby the same body between 1921and 1926 61Paul Cret, "Lecturenotes for Modern Architecture,16 May 1921," Paul P. in approximatelythirty-six separate books. The design was documented in CretCollection, Special Collections Library, University of Pennsylvania. dozens of publications,the most important of which are Clement E. Chase, 62Paul Cret, "Modern Architecture," in The Significance of the Fine Arts "The MainPiers of the BridgeOver the DelawareRiver, Between Philadelphia (Boston, 1923), 214. and Camden: Design," Journal of the Franklin Institute 196 (November 1923): 63 Paul Cret,"The Architect as Collaboratorwith the Engineer,"Architectural 593-608; Allston Dana, "The Anchorages of the Bridge Over the Delaware Forum 49 (July 1928): 97. As late as 1937, Cret wrote: "Before the divorce of River Between Philadelphia and Camden: Design of the Anchorages," Journal architecture and engineering, which took place in the middle of the XVIIIth of the Franklin Institute 198 (September 1924): 291-313; Ralph Modjeski, "The Century, the French students of the Ecole des Ponts et Chauss6es either Delaware River Bridge Between Philadelphia and Camden," Journal of the received a first training in an architect's office before specializing for the FranklinInstitute 193 (January 1922): 1-14; and Leon S. Moisseiff, "The Towers, government service, or were requested, while in the School, to attend a course Cables and Stiffening Trusses of the Bridge Over the Delaware River Between in Architecture, given at that time by the famous architect, FranCois Blondel" Philadelphia and Camden," Journal of theFranklin Institute200 (October 1925): (Cret, "Introduction" to Wilbur J. Watson, A Decade of Bridges, 1926-1936 436-466. The construction of the bridge was documented most thoroughly in [Cleveland, 1937], n.p.). a series of twenty-four articles that appeared in the Journal oftheEngineers'Club of 64 H. D. Eberlein, "The Delaware River Bridge," 2. Other examples include Philadelphia, sometimes titled Engineers and Engineering,between January 1923 a 1925 article stating that "upon the matter of the towers alone Dr. Crete [sic] and October 1925. A photographic history of the construction of the bridge made hundreds and hundreds of sketches. He worked with Mr. Modjeski and was presented in American Cable Company, Inc., The World'sGreatest Suspension his engineering staff for months to combine beauty of line with the strength Bridge, Philadelphia to Camden: The Part Played in Its Constructionby the American and durability which it was necessary, first of all, to put into every part of the CableCompany, Inc. (NewYork, 1926). bridge" ("Architecture of Giant Bridge a Carefully Considered Point," Building 57The single-span record, 1,750 feet, did not last long. The Ambassador 5 [June 1925]: 14). A local journalist recorded that "Mr. Modjeski evidently Bridge, constructed from 1927 to 1929 over the Detroit River from Detroit to discovered in Mr. Cret a good team mate, one who could express in aesthetic

276 JSAH / 57:3, SEPTEMBER1998

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions terms what the engineer needs to perfect his work of strength and utility" ing Record50 (2 July 1904): 23-24. Between 1912 and 1917, Carrere and ("The Men Who Made the Bridge Beautiful," CamdenCourier, 5 July 1926, Hastings added an ornate arch and colonnade to the Manhattanplaza. See n.p.). The engineer Chasewrote that "the detail designing of the towerswas a New York Department of Bridges, ContractDrawings for the Improvementof the combined laborof the engineersand architectsof theJoint Commissionover a Manhattan Plaza of the Manhattan Bridge (New York, 1912). period of six months" (Chase,"The DelawareRiver Bridge," American Architect, 78 "The New ManhattanBridge: A Bridge Beautiful as Well as Useful," 334). Architects'andBuilders'Magazine 5 (September 1904): 547-554. 65Ralph Modjeskito Paul Cret, 31 August 1927, Paul P. Cret Collection, 79DRBJoint Commissions, Final Reportof 1921, 22. Athenaeumof Philadelphia.Emphasis added. so0Cret, "The Architect as Collaborator,"102. 66Paul Cret to Ralph Modjeski,1 September 1927, Paul P. Cret Collection, 81 Thomas Hastings,"The Relationsof Life to Stylein Architecture,"Harp- Athenaeumof Philadelphia.Emphasis added. er'sNew MonthlyMagazine 88 (May 1894): 962. Little of the day-to-dayinteraction between Modjeski'sengineering team 82Cret presented his views on archaeology in a 1923 essay on modern and Cret'sarchitectural team is documented. A rareview of this collaboration architecture.For example, he wrote: "Archaeology,in its effort to revivepast was providedbyJohn Harbeson, the principalassociate at Cret'sfirm. On 30 civilizations,not only has its seduction for the intellectual interested in all December 1932,F.Julius Dreyfous, an architectfrom New Orleans,wrote Cret: things historical,but, by the publicationof worksillustrated with the resultsof "I am taking the further liberty of requestingyour indulgence to advise me these researches,it puts within reach of the public a whole repertoryof forms, upon a point of professionalpractice which has arisen in connection with an to borrow from which is a sore temptation" (Cret, "ModernArchitecture," importantbridge project. My firm anticipatesan associationwith the bridge 203). engineers as consulting architects, both on architecturalengineering and 8s Bragdon,"Towards a NewArchitecture," 245. aesthetic design of the bridge and its approaches. Knowing that you were 84Cret, "TheArchitect as Collaborator,"97. associatedon the DelawareRiver Bridge, and other importantprojects of this 85Bragdon, "Towards a New Architecture,"246. I 86 nature, would like to have you advise on what basis such an associationis Both "garden"and "yard"derive from the Old English geard,meaning generallymade as to the divisionof work,responsibility and fees." BecauseCret enclosure.Also of interest is the relatedverb "to garth,"meaning to enclose was sick with influenza, Harbeson replied for him on 6 January1933. Of the with a fence. collaboration,he wrote: "Atfirst, the engineers [of the DRB] wished all such 87Note the late-nineteenth-centuryclassic George A. Martin,Fences, Gates [architectural]studies to be made in their office, but as the work proceeded, and Bridges(New York, 1887). and they developed complete confidence in Mr. Cret's reasonableness,and s Cret,"The Architect as Collaborator,"97. especiallyfound that he did not have the idea that an architect'swork consisted 89Ibid. Cret was referringto a passagefrom HerbertSpencer's Autobiography, in putting around a lot of irrelevantornament, but solely in arrangingthe in which, to prove Huxley'ssense of humor, Spencer noted that Huxley once engineering materialsin the best possible way,there was no friction, and the chided him for his proclivitytoward speculation: Huxley "wasone of a circle in engineers came up once a week to discussdetails" (Paul P. Cret Collection, which tragedywas the topic, when my name came up in connexion with some SpecialCollections Library, University of Pennsylvania). opinion or other;whereupon he remarked-'Oh! you know,Spencer's idea of 67Cret designed the UniversityAvenue Bridge in Philadelphiain 1927 and tragedyis a deduction killed by a fact' " (Spencer,An Autobiography[New York, 1928. The bridge was featuredin six full-pagephotographs in the photo essay 1904], 1:467). "The UniversityBridge at Philadelphia,"Architectural Record 68 (August1930): 90Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Utilityand Liabilityof Historyfor Life," in 159-164. UnfashionableObservations, trans. Richard T. Gray (Stanford, 1995), 87-88. 68 Cret,"The Architect as Collaborator,"97. Nietzschewas occasionally evoked byAmerican engineers and their 69 apologists. Ibid. For example,Archibald Henderson proclaimedthat " [in] this Age of Steel, in Cret's 70 notions of rememberingand forgettingmight be relatedprofitably this vastcountry of Americathe newword for the new beautyis demanded.It is to Viollet-le-Duc'snotion of forgetfulness,which was elucidated in Martin time for man, in the words of Nietzsche, to say Yea!to all the Universe" Bressani, "Notes on Viollet-le-Duc'sPhilosophy of History: Dialectics and (Henderson, "In Praiseof Bridges,"927). Technology,"JSAH48 (December 1989): 327-350. 91 Kenneth Frampton, in Studies in TectonicCulture: ThePoetics of Construction 71Cret, "TheArchitect as Collaborator,"98-99. Emphasisadded. in Nineteenthand TwentiethCentury Architecture (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 100-101. 72Ibid., Emphasisadded. 1995), 27, asserts:"Inasmuch as [architecture's]continuity transcends mortal- 73Ibid.,103. Emphasisadded. ity,building providesthe basis for life and culture. In this sense, its is neither 74Ibid.,104. Emphasisadded. high art nor high technology.To the extent that it defies time, it is anachronis- 101. 75Ibid., tic by definition. Durationand durabilityare its ultimatevalues." Cret, on the 76 Ibid. other hand, would have argued that it is precisely the human awarenessof Carl 77For example, Condit has asserted that the ManhattanBridge de- mortality,of the absolutelimit of death, that compels the architectin the futile, buted the "structural system [that] remained substantiallyfixed for nearly eternal quest to reconcile art and technology.Architecture as such comes into twenty years" (Condit, American Building: Materials and Techniquesfrom the First existence in the gap between durabilityand impermanence,between timeless- ColonialSettlement to thePresent[Chicago and London, 1968], 234. Leon Moisseiff, ness and timeliness. of the servedas a of the design engineer DRB, designer ManhattanBridge, and 92Othmar H Ammann, "GeorgeWashington Bridge: General Conception chief of Ralph Modjeski, engineer the DRB, served as a consultant to its design and Development of Design," Proceedingsofthe AmericanSociety of Civil Engineers and construction. See Ralph Modjeski, City of New York,Department of Bridges, 97 (October 1933): 46. Manhattan Bridge:Report (New York, 1909). Three distinct designs were devel- 9 On Moisseiff, see Othmar H. Ammann and Frederick Lienhard, "Obitu- for the Manhattan between oped Bridge 1900 and its completion in 1909. ary for Leon Solomon Moisseiff," Transactionsof theAmerican Society of Engineers Moisseiff, the chief draftsman of the Department of Bridges of the Borough of 111 (1946): 1510. On the innovations, see Moisseiff, "Towers, Cables and Manhattan, was involved in all three phases. The first, a wire cable suspension Stiffening Trusses," Journal of the Franklin Institute, 446. Near the end of his bridge, was executed around the turn of the century under engineer Richard distinguished career, Moisseiff reflected upon his role in the definition of S. Buck. The subsequent bridge commissioner, Gustav discarded Lindenthal, suspension bridges: "The main reason why the Manhattan Bridge is so impor- Buck's plan and created an eyebar He also commissioned design. Beaux-Arts tant to the discussion of the development of modern suspension bridges is that architect Henry Hornbostel to decorate the bridge. The following commis- it was the first bridge to be proportioned and designed on the basis of the sioner, George Best, executed a third that was design similar to the original Deflection Theory" (Moisseiff, "Growth in Suspension Bridge Knowledge," Best Carrare and plan. engaged Hastings to ornament this design. An explana- Engineering News-Record123 [17 August 1939]: 206-207). Modjeski's firm in- tion of the architects' can be found in a design letter to the Municipal Art sisted that the technological advances in suspension-bridge design had taken Commission that was reprinted in "The Manhattan Across the East Bridge place not at the Manhattan Bridge but at the DRB. "The greatest improve- River, New York City: Revised Plans," News 52 Engineering (7 July 1904): 1-3; ments in design, which led to our modern concept, were developed under and "The Architectural Features of the Manhattan Bridge, NewYork," Engineer- Modjeski for the Delaware River Bridge at Philadelphia" (Modjeski and

FARNHAM:PAUL CRET 277

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Masters, "Suspension Bridges and Wind Resistance," Engineering News-Record sufficient play to the bearings on which the cables rest to prevent the cables 127 [23 October 1941]: 566). themselves slipping and chafing in the saddles if affected by the force of storms 94There is an enormous technical literature on deflection theory, which was or variations of load, or when lengthening or contracting under changes of first proposed in 1888 by the Austrian engineer Josef Melan. See Melan, temperature" (W. C. Conant, "The Brooklyn Bridge," Harper's New Monthly Handbuch derlngenieurwissenschaften,2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1888); Leon S. Moisseiff, Magazine 66 [May 1883]: 944). On the saddles, see also Montgomery Schuyler, "Theory and Formulas for the Analytical Computation of a Three-Span "The Brooklyn Bridge as Monument," Harper'sWeekly 27 (26 May 1883): 326. Suspension Bridge with Braced Cable," Transactions of the American Societyof 110Modjeski, "Delaware River Bridge," Journal of theFranklin Institute, 6. 94-128; idem, "Towers, Cables and Stiffening Trusses," 111DRBJoint Commission, Final Reportof 1921, 21. CivilEngineers55"(1905): Journal of the Franklin Institute, 436-466; idem, "The Deflection Theory as 112The earliest proposals for the George Washington Bridge appear in a Applied to Suspension Bridges with Suspended Trusses," in DRBJoint Commis- proposal by Othmar Ammann titled "Study of a Highway Bridge across the sion, Final Report of 1927, 96-105. On the relationship between mathematical Hudson River at New York, between Washington Heights & Fort Lee" and theory and aesthetics in American suspension-bridge design, see Jameson W. dated 1 November 1923. It included a rough sketch for a bridge that incorpo- Doig and David P. Billington, "Ammann's First Bridge: A Study in Engineering, rated masonry-clad towers. This proposal contradicts the often-stated opinion Politics, and Entrepreneurial Behavior," Technologyand Culture35 (uly 1994): that the "architectural" features of the bridge were originated by Cass Gilbert, 537-570. the architect who developed numerous studies for the towers in the later 95 Unlike Laird and other architects, Cret accepted the dominance of the twenties. See Governor George S. Silzer Papers, New Jersey State Archives, engineer in collaborative bridge design. Of this sort of collaboration, he once Department of State. 113 wrote that "the engineer's part is undoubtably more important. The architect Modjeski, "Delaware River Bridge,"Journal oftheEngineers'ClubofPhiladel- may play second fiddle" (Cret, "Introduction" to Watson, n.p.). phia, 2. 96Cret, "The Architect as Collaborator," 104. When the Board of Engineers 114Paul Cret, "Bridges," ArchitecturalProgress 4 (November 1930): 19. issued the preliminary plan for the DRB, they likewise declared that the design 115In 1921 Modjeski notified the Bridge Commission: "In collaboration with team had sought "to harmonize the steel construction with the stone work" Mr. Cret, the design for the pier itself above water has been developed and the (DRBJoint Commission, Final Reportof1921, 22). first steps have been taken towards its submission to the Art Jury for the 97 Cret, "The Architect as Collaborator," 99. necessary approval" (Modjeski to the Delaware River BridgeJoint Commission, 98Modjeski, "The Delaware River Bridge," Journal of the Franklin Institute, 6. 16 September 1921, Delaware River Bridge Papers, Samuel Vauclain Collec- 99The most complete discussion of the design of the anchorages can be tion, Historical Society of Pennsylvania). For the actual DRB submission to the found in Dana, "The Anchorages of the DRB," 291-313. ArtJury, see the ArtJury submission files 1053, "Delaware River Bridge Main 100Chase, "The Delaware River Bridge," AmericanArchitect, 334. Spans, etc.," and 1054, "Masonry of the Main Piers," in Philadelphia ArtJury 101 Edward Hungerford, "The Weaving of the Bridge," Harper's Monthly Papers, City Archive of Philadelphia. Both submissions were received on 22 Magazine 119 (uly 1909): 230. September 1921 and approved on 23 December 1921. Of note is the fact that 102 Cret, "The Architect as Collaborator," 104. Cret was a member of the Philadelphia ArtJury from its founding in 1911 until 103Aymar Embury II, "Esthetics of Bridge Anchorages," Civil Engineering8 his death in 1945. He was excused from considering any of his own projects. (February 1938): 88; also published as "The Aesthetics of Bridge Design," 116Cret's role in the design of the towers was noted by Theo White, an PencilPoints 19 (February 1938): 109-120. architect in Cret's atelier, in his introduction to a collection of Cret's writings. 104 Embury, "Aesthetics of Bridge Design," 112. See Theo B. White, ed., Paul Philippe Cret:Architect and Teacher(Philadelphia, 105Embury, "Esthetics of Bridge Anchorages," 86. 1973), 31. 106 HenryJ. Murphy pointed out that Embury's design for the Triborough 117Moisseiff, "Towers, Cables and Stiffening Trusses," Journal of theFranklin Bridge was both symbolic and aesthetic, not solely utilitarian. See Henry J. Institute, 448. Like Moisseiff, Embury noted that his collaborative tower design Murphy, "Letter to the Editor," PencilPoints 19 (May 1938): 307-308. for the Triborough Bridge had been guided by both structural and aesthetic 107The term "streamline" was coined in 1865 by W.J. Rankine, an English requirements. Stating that towers designed strictly for material efficiency engineer and professor of engineering at the University of Glasgow. In hydrody- "would have been awkward and ungainly, and might have even appeared weak namics and aerodynamics the streamline is used to represent the direction of to the general public, because of the slimness of the legs," Embury echoed flow in a fluid. At any point on that line, the direction of a tangent to that line is Moisseiffs predilection for towers that afforded both structural and visual the direction of the flow of fluid at that point. The notion of streamlining strength (Aymar Embury II, "Esthetic Design of Steel Structures," CivilEngineer- migrated from discourses on the physical sciences to those on automobile ing 8 [April 1938]: 262; also published as "Aesthetic Design of Steel Struc- styling in the second decade of the twentieth century. See, for example, the tures," PencilPoints 19 [September 1938]: 409-418). 118 chapter "Streamlining and Full Mechanization" in Sigfried Giedion, Mechaniza- Chase, "Main Piers of the DRB," 593. tion Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History (New York, 1969), 119Elizabeth Grossman has offered a cogent political explanation for Cret's 607-611. Cret was involved in the design of streamlined railroad cars in the work: "For Cret, neither a static image of the past nor a functionalist view of the thirties and forties. See Cret, "Streamlined Trains," Magazine ofArt 30 (anuary future was appropriate for the complexity of civic responses required for a 1937): 17-20; and idem, "Interior Streamlining," InteriorDesign and Decoration republic" (Grossman, Civic Architecture,210). Founded explicitly upon the 17 (December 1941): 20-25, 41-42, 48, 50-51. The question of aerodynamics guarantee of individual rights, the United States exhibited unique tensions reappeared in bridge engineering after the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows between individuals and the collectivity during the emergence of a modern, Bridge in Washington in 1940. mass, urban, industrial society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth o108Moisseiff pioneered the elastic steel bridge tower with his designs for the centuries. As Grossman has shown, Cret's architecture exhibits these tensions. Manhattan Bridge and then perfected it during his work on the DRB. On the It likewise exposes, and even monumentalizes, the tensions inherent in any origins of cellular construction at the DRB, see Tom F. Peters, "The Skyscrap- attempt to harmonize architecture and engineering into a greater unity. er's Many Origins," Domus 669 (February 1986): 27. 120 Ibid., 156. 109 Modjeski noted that "[1]ast year a sudden sliding of the cables [of the 121David P. Billington, The Towerand the Bridge: The New Art of Structural Brooklyn Bridge] took place, amounting to about 1/4", and causing consider- Engineering (NewYork, 1983), 4. able, though unnecessary alarm" (Modjeski, "Delaware River Bridge," Journal 122Cret, "Introduction," to Watson, n.p. of the WesternSociety of Engineers, 236). The rolling saddle mechanisms of the 123Cret quoted the first sentence of the "Avant-Propos" of Paul Sijourn6, Brooklyn Bridge were intended to function as follows: At each junction of the Les Grandes Voi2tes(Bourges, 1913), 1: n.p. The original French reads: "On fait cable and tower is mounted "a set of iron bed-plates, on which rest the 'saddles' une vofite d'apras les vofites faites: c'est affaire d'exp~rience." Sejourni's study, in which the great suspension cables ride. These are iron castings in the form of an enormous six-volume treatise published from 1913 to 1916, includes an a segment of a circle, with a groove to receive the cable on the upper and illustrated inventory of all large masonry and concrete bridges in the world, as convex side. The under and plane side lies on a layer of small iron rollers held well as extensive advice on all phases of bridge design and construction. For a in place by flanges on the surface of the bed-plate. The object of these is to give short biography of Sejourn6, see Bernard Marrey, "Paul S~journ6,"in L'Art de

278 JSAH / 57:3, SEPTEMBER1998

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions l'ing&nieur: inventeur, ed. Antoine Picon (Paris, 1997), IllustrationCredits constructeur,entrepreneur, 450. Figure 1. Delaware River Bridge Joint Commission of the States of Pennsylva- 124 Cret let S6journ6 speak for him in an unpublished paper on his Calvert nia and New Jersey, Report of the Board of Engineers (Burlington, N.J., 1922), Street Bridge (1931) in Washington, D.C., a collaboration with the engineering opp. 22 firm of and Case. See Paul "The Calvert Street Modjeski, Masters, Cret, Figure 2. Le Corbusier ? copyright 1997 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New Bridge," unpublished paper, 1931, Paul P. Cret Collection, Special Collections York/ADAGP, Paris/Fondation Le Corbusier Library, University of Pennsylvania. Figures 3, 4, 6, 9, 14. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania 125Embury, "Esthetics of Bridge Anchorages," 86; Ammann, "Planning and Figure 5. o 1928 ArchitecturalForum,used with permission from BPI Communi- Design of Bronx-Whitestone Bridge," CivilEngineering9 (April 1939): 217. cations Inc. 126 Embury, "Esthetics of Bridge Anchorages," 87. Figures 7, 8. Delaware River BridgeJoint Commission of the States of Pennsylva- 127 for See, example "Stays and Brakes Check Oscillation of Whitestone nia and NewJersey, Final Reportof theBoard ofEngineersto theDelawareRiverBridge Bridge," EngineeringNews-Record125 (5 December 1940): 750-752. Joint Commission of the States of Pennsylvania and New Jersey (Burlington, N.J., 128James K. Finch, "Wind Failures of Suspension Bridges, or, Evolution and 1927), 87, plate XIII, section G-C of the Decay Stiffening Truss," EngineeringNews-Record 126 (13 March 1941): Figure 10. Delaware River Bridge Joint Commission of the States of Pennsylva- 404. added. Finch have Emphasis may had greater insights into this problem nia and NewJersey, Final Reportof theBoard ofEngineersto theDelawareRiverBridge unlike most because, engineers, he had contemplated the implications of the Joint Commission of the States of Pennsylvania and New Jersey (Burlington, N.J., disciplinary schism. In 1936 he had asked: "Why should two professions which 1921), 12 are the members of the same principal industry and have a more or less Figure 11. Delaware River Bridge Joint Commission of the States of Pennsylva- common fail to history, agree?... [T]wo professions, sisters under the skin, nia and New Jersey, Report of the Delaware River BridgeJoint Commission (n.p., have developed with diametrically opposed methods, viewpoints, and ideals" 1923), 3 (Finch, "Engineering and Architecture: Should Not These Two Ancient Profes- Figure 12. Architecture72 (August 1935): 66 sions Speak the Same Language?" Civil Engineering6 [June 1936]: 377). Figure 13. PencilPoints 19 (February 1938): 111 129 "Forgotten History," EngineeringNews-Record 126 (13 March 1941): 390. Figure 15. Engineering(London) 10(8July 1870):31 added. Emphasis Figure 16. City of Philadelphia, Department of Records, City, Archives, RG 140, 130I would like to thank Guy Nordenson for bringing this aspect of the ArtJury: Art Commission, Submissions, 1911-1960 deflection theory to my attention. Figure 17. PencilPoints 19 (July 1938):408 131 "Towards a New Bragdon, Architecture," 246. Figure 18. Special Collections Division, University of Libraries, 132 Washington Cret, "The Architect as Collaborator," 97. Photo by F. B. Farquharson, negative # 2 133 to Cret, "Introduction," Watson, n.p. Figure 19. PhiladelphiaEvening Public Ledger,5January 1922, 5

FARNHAM:PAUL CRET 279

This content downloaded from 132.216.1.39 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 18:04:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions