Gustav Lindenthal - Career

Career

When he arrived in Vienna he became an assistant in the engineering department for the Empress Elisabeth Railway of Austria. Two years later he joined the Union Construction Company, where he gained experience in building incline planes and railroads. Then a year later he decided to join the Swiss National Railroad, where he was hired on as a division engineer in charge of location and construction. While living in Vienna, he attended some public engineering lectures at a local university. However, he never did actually attend the university or receive a degree. Lindenthal in fact taught himself mathematics, engineering theory, metallurgy, hydraulics, estimating, management, and everything else that a successful bridge engineer needed to know. Nevertheless, the lack of his formal education hindered him from further advancement in Europe, so he decided to immigrate to the United States in 1874.

When he first arrived in the United States he was employed as a journeyman stonemason for the memorial granite building of the Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia (Janberg 2006). After completion of this project, Lindenthal worked for the Keystone Bridge Company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on numerous projects over a three-year period. While working for this company, he gained valuable experience which propelled him to the status of bridge engineer. He worked for the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad during 1879 to 1881.

In 1881, Lindenthal established his own consulting business and built four bridges in the Pittsburgh area: 30th Street Bridge (Herrs Island); Smithfield Street Bridge (over the Monongahela River; 1883), Youghiogheny River Bridge at McKeesport (1883); and the Seventh Street Bridge (Allegheny River; 1884). In 1884, he founded the North River Bridge Company in New York, with the intent of building a massive bridge over the Hudson River for the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR). Although the PRR ultimately decided to build tunnels under the river rather than a bridge, the two companies continued their relationship. The PRR hired Lindenthal in 1904 to work on the New York Connecting Railroad and lead the Hell Gate Bridge project. The completed bridge was dedicated by Lindenthal and the PRR on March 9, 1917.

The City of New York appointed Lindenthal Commissioner of Bridges in 1902. He worked on several East River bridge projects and directed the Queensboro Bridge project, which was completed in 1909.

The North River Bridge Company developed another proposal for a large Hudson River suspension bridge in 1920. This design would have been built at 57th Street in Manhattan, to carry both roadway and railroads, but neither the city nor the railroads were supportive. (Lindenthal's colleague Othmar Ammann developed a scaled-down bridge proposal several years later, which became the George Washington Bridge, completed in 1931.) Lindenthal worked on several other bridge projects around the country in the 1920s.

At the age of eighty-five, Lindenthal succumbed to a long illness and died shortly after, at his home in Metuchen, New Jersey. Up until that point, he remained active as president and chief engineer of the North River Bridge Company.