Looking today at the imposing bulk of Quebec Bridge as it straddles the St Lawrence River, you would be hard pushed to imagine its inauspicious origins. The crossing of the mighty St Lawrence was always going to be a major engineering challenge, but by the beginning of the 20th century a solution to the efficient …
Detroit was on the cusp of its rebirth as Motor City and Henry Ford was cutting his teeth as a young automobile engineer when Messrs Wiggins and Moore, two developers and impresarios, secured a prestigious city-center plot to be the new home for their popular and much-loved Wonderland Theater. The plan was for a new …
It took engineer Thomas Bouch 20 years to persuade the operators of the east coast London-to-Scotland railway line to commit the funds for a great bridge to cross the Firth of Tay in Scotland. When the bridge was completed in 1877 it was, at over 3 km (2 mi), the world’s longest by far. Bouch …
Lawrence was an important mill town situated on the Merrimack River in northeastern Massachusetts. Appropriately enough, one of its grandest buildings was Pemberton Mill, a mighty five-story brick edifice with an overall length of 85 m (280 ft.). Built in 1853, this busy cotton mill produced woven textiles and clothing on some 700 looms. The …
Chester in Northwest England had been an important settlement since Roman times but its status as a regional center received a major boost when a new long-distance railway line opened in the 1840s, running between London and Holyhead on the island of Anglesey. The line passed through Chester and had to cross the River Dee …