The Meaning of the Eads Bridge. A Presentation by. Carlos A. Schwantes of the University of Missouri-St. Louis

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1 The Meaning of the Eads Bridge A Presentation by Carlos A. Schwantes of the University of Missouri-St. Louis My purpose this morning is not to discuss the engineering aspects of the venerable Eads Bridge but rather its long-term significance and meaning. * * * I used to think about bridges as structures that made it easy to get from one side of a place to another be it a river or a ravine. A few years ago I was fortunate enough to be able to make a weeklong boat cruise along the majestic Columbia and Snake rivers in the Pacific Northwest with David Billington, esteemed professor of civil engineering at Princeton University. Each day he gave an illustrated presentation on the aesthetics of bridges to an audience of about sixty travelers. The whole concept of bridge aesthetics was new to me, but in short order it set loose a whole train of thought that culminated in my study of the meaning of the Eads Bridge. Let me now take you back in time to the year 1856 on the upper Mississippi River. Something very significant happened that year at Rock Island, Illinois, in April and the Midwest would never be the same. That was because the first railroad bridge of any type was completed across the Mississippi. Apart from a diminutive wire suspension bridge hung over a narrow part of the Mississippi at Minneapolis a year earlier, the Rock Island bridge was the only one crossing the continent s greatest river. It was not a particularly attractive bridge, and unlike the Brooklyn Bridge or Golden Gate Bridge it never became a popular icon. Structurally, it did not test the limits of engineering know-how in the mid 1850s and thus serve as a landmark along the road 1

2 to more impressive technological feats. But neither was it an ordinary bridge. Its five wooden spans carried the first railroad tracks across the broad Mississippi River, and this feat alone made it a potent symbol of a fast approaching revolution in transportation a truly magnificent symbol to believers in the power of railroads to transform the American West, and a frightening one to observers comfortable with older and simpler technologies that had served well the transportation needs of the Midwest for more than thirty years. All revolutions have winners and losers. Veteran boatmen worried about losing valuable business to the Chicago and Rock Island Rail Road Company after it completed its bridge across the Mississippi River in April For some time the steamboatmen and the ports they served had feared that rails would divert river commerce to Chicago, the upstart city on Lake Michigan, instead of allowing it to follow its accustomed channel downriver to the time-honored cities of Saint Louis and New Orleans. The Saint Louis Republican fumed in April 1854: Chicago will soon stretch her iron arms across Illinois and Iowa, down to the Illinois River, and to the upper Mississippi, controlling the travel and business of a vast territory, naturally tributary to St. Louis. The simmering anger of boatmen apparently boiled over a few weeks later on the night of May 6, when the Effie Afton, one of the swiftest boats on the Mississippi River, crashed into a support of the new bridge. Fire from an upended cook stove aboard the steamboat consumed the Effie Afton and one of the bridge s wooden spans. To some observers the crash had been a deliberate attempt by boatmen to topple the object of their anxiety. Deliberate or not, they were overjoyed to learn that the hated hazard to navigation, as boatmen viewed the bridge, had been reduced to ashes that floated lazily 2

3 toward the Gulf of Mexico. Up and down the Mississippi, jubilant captains repeatedly sounded their deep-voiced steam whistles to celebrate the news. John Hurd, owner of the Effie Afton, sued the bridge s owner for fifty thousand dollars in damages. The Rock Island Rail Road defended itself by hiring a forty-seven year old Illinois trial lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. Meanwhile, the railroad hastily repaired and reopened its long bridge only four months after the incident. No steamboat whistles celebrated the occasion. The lawsuit, incidentally, ended in a hung jury. Like all commercially minded Americans in the 1850s, veteran steamboatmen understood clearly that trade flowed like water that is, it invariably followed paths of least resistance. Human ingenuity could divert trade into innovative channels that offered speedier, safer, and more convenient access to markets. For that reason, here in the Midwest of the 1850s steamboatmen opposed all bridges on the Mississippi not just as hazards to navigation, but because they reasoned (correctly) that the lucrative commerce of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa would flow by train through Chicago instead of continuing by boat to the well-known wharves and warehouses in Saint Louis. After this there would be no end of trouble for boatmen familiar with the great river corridors that radiated out from the Missouri metropolis. Together, the Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, and their tributary rivers formed a lengthy and time-tested water highway of incalculable commercial importance. Just before Rock Island rails first bridged the Mississippi in 1856, Saint Louis recorded nearly seven thousand arrivals and departures of steamboats a year. Technology as represented by railroad lines and not geographical advantage as conferred by good river connections would henceforth be paramount in determining the 3

4 growth and influence of cities in the American West. During the 1850s, in fact, the nation s midsection had witnessed a fundamental reorientation of the flow of commerce, from the north-south orientation of steamboat traffic linking Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, Saint Louis, and New Orleans, to an east-west orientation of rail traffic that benefited Chicago, Indianapolis, Columbus, and other upstart cities. For this reason, rail commerce spanning the Father of Waters in 1856 would assuredly not originate or terminate on the Mississippi s western bank. Rock Island tracks could easily extend the reach of Chicago well beyond the borders of Illinois and far across the fertile farmland of Iowa. In the 1850s as result of an expanding network of iron rails, Saint Louis began to worry a great deal about the upstart city on Lake Michigan. Saint Louis dated back to the 1770s Chicago only to the 1830s. St. Louis had grown prosperous and smug as a result of the marvelous system of waterways enable steamboat commerce to expand in all directions. Apart from Lake Michigan, Chicago had no conspicuous river connections. Hence it became an early convert to railroads, and bridging the Mississippi River at Rock Island showed just how determined Chicago was to weave a commercial web based on railroad technology. A fierce rivalry between Saint Louis and Chicago erupted during the 1850s. And as a result of Chicago skillful use of railroad iron to extend its commercial reach to the forests of the Great Lakes, the metal mines of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan s Upper Peninsula, the grain fields of Iowa, the cattle of Kansas, Saint Louisans grew increasingly worried about how to maintain their preeminent position as the gateway to the American West. 4

5 One thing was certain: it would take money and plenty of it to maintain Saint Louis s commercial advantage over Chicago. Saint Louis would have to get into the railroad building game. Ironically, however, with a growing dependence on railroad, the river highway that had done so much to bless Saint Louis economically increasingly seemed like a moat that cut it off from the half of the United States east of the Mississippi. Chicago had no such disadvantage. It became clear that what Saint Louis needed to stay in the race was a bridge across the Mississippi. The first railroad tracks from the East Coast reached Illinoistown (now East Saint Louis) in But from East Saint Louis every article of commerce had to be ferried to and from Saint Louis by boat. For the next seventeen years after 1857, a fleet of ferry boats seemed to control (and constrict) economic opportunity for Saint Louis. Meanwhile, Chicago continued to expand its commercial reach by rail. The Windy City seemed to gain population every day. In 1860, on the verge of the bloody American Civil War, Saint Louis recorded a population of approximately 160,000 residents, while Chicago had 112,000. Ten years later, in 1870, Saint Louis numbered almost 311,000 residents, while Chicago had 299,000. Saint Louis remained barely ahead of Chicago or maybe not. These then were the stakes when the first trans-mississippi bridge opened at Saint Louis only in 1874, nearly two decades later than Chicago s Rock Island bridge farther north. As with its majestic Gateway Arch completed in 1965, Saint Louis sought a truly monumental structure that would attract the attention of the nation, if not the whole world. The new bridge made the boldest possible engineering statement about the future 5

6 intentions of the Missouri metropolis as well as provided it with through rail connections to markets east of the Mississippi River. In other words, an impressive new bridge would, in the words of civil engineering professor David Billington, symbolize its aspirations of reestablishing economic dominance in the Middle West, in the face of Chicago s explosive growth. At Saint Louis, the Mississippi River Bridge (popularly known as the Eads Bridge after it opened in 1874) was revolutionary in design because its chief engineer James Buchanan Eads, made extensive use of a strong new construction material called steel, but once again, as had happened so often in Saint Louis s rivalry with Chicago, it was a case of too little, too late. As impressive as the Eads Bridge was as a milestone in the history of civil engineering and in opening through rail connections between East and West at Saint Louis, it never enabled Saint Louis to overtake Chicago economically and regain its status as the premier city of the West. Curiously, the imposing horizontal steel framework of the Eads Bridge was supposed to have inspired Chicago architect Louis Sullivan to erect a ten-story vertical steel framework that became the basis for one of America s early skyscrapers, the Wainwright Building, completed in Saint Louis in But it was in Chicago and New York that the skyscraper flourished, and in Chicago today stands the tallest building in America, the Sears Tower. I urge you to ride the Metrolink across the Eads Bridge. Get off on either side and admire the genius of James B. Eads. All the while keep in mind this lesson that bridges are incredibly revolutionary instruments in their power to reorient time and space over a 6

7 vast landscape as well as in their power to inspire awe and wonder in people from all walks of life. Please note: this brief talk is abstracted from the following forthcoming book: Carlos A. Schwantes and James P. Ronda, The West the Railroads Made (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008). I alone, however, am responsible for any typographical or factual errors contained therein. Feel free to me at: caschwantes@sbcglobal.net. 7

The Knowledge Bank at The Ohio State University. Ohio State Engineer. Front Matter. Mar

The Knowledge Bank at The Ohio State University Ohio State Engineer Title: Issue Date: Publisher: Front Matter Mar-1931 Ohio State University, College of Engineering Citation: Ohio State Engineer, vol.