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Spanning the Gilded Age

Name: Spanning the Gilded Age
Brand: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
SKU: 9781421448626
Price: 75.99 AUD
Availability: InStock

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESSISBN: 9781421448626

James Eads and the Great Steel Bridge

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$75.99

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By John K Brown
Imprint: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
Release Date: August 19, 2024
Format: HARDBACK
Pages: 392

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The fascinating history of the St. Louis Bridge, the first steel structure in the world.

In Spanning the Gilded Age, John K. Brown tells the daring, improbable story of the construction of the St. Louis Bridge, known popularly as the Eads Bridge. Completed in 1874, it was the first structure of any kind—anywhere in the world—built of steel. This history details the origins, design, construction, and enduring impact of a unique feat of engineering, and it illustrates how Americans built their urban infrastructure during the nineteenth century.

With three graceful arches spanning the Mississippi River, the Eads Bridges twin decks carried a broad boulevard above a dual-track railroad. To place its stone piers on bedrock, engineer James Eads pioneered daring innovations that allowed excavators to work one hundred feet beneath the river. With construction scarcely begun, Eads circulated a prospectus—offering a 500 percent return on investment—that attracted wealthy investors, including J. Pierpont Morgan in New York and his father, Junius, in London. This record-breaking design, which employed a novel method to lay its foundations and an untried metal for its arches, was projected by a steamboat man who had never before designed a bridge.

By detailing influential figures such as James Eads, the Morgans, Andrew Carnegie, and Jay Gould, Spanning the Gilded Age offers new perspectives on an era that saw profound changes in business, engineering, governance, and society. Beyond the bridge itself, Brown explores a broader story: how America became urban, industrial, and interconnected. This triumph of engineering reflects the Gilded Ages grand ambitions, and the bridge remains a vital transportation artery today.

John K. Brown is the author of The Baldwin Locomotive Works, 1831-1915: A Study in American Industrial Practice. He taught history, applied ethics, and writing in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society at the University of Virginia.

Preface

Money Then and Now

Leading Figures

Prologue: The Celebration

1. Captain Eads

2. Advances from War

3. Conventional or Radical

4. The Art of a Promoter

5. To Bedrock

6. London and Real Money

7. Troubles with Steel

8. Arches Over the River

9. Foreclosure and a Pool

10. Successes Across Time

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Well written and exhaustively researched, John K. Browns book is about a builder, a bridge, money men, and the greed, ambition, confidence, and vision that made possible the engineering marvels of Americas Gilded Age.

— David Nasaw, author of Andrew Carnegie

In Spanning the Gilded Age, one of Americas most monumental pieces of engineering has finally found the historian it deserves. While writing a first-rate treatment of the physical and technical challenges Eadss bridge overcame, Brown also highlights the financial creativity required for such achievements in the age of high capitalism.

— Robert Friedel, University of Maryland

A century and a half after the completion of the Eads Bridge, we have the first comprehensive history of the remarkable James Buchanan Eads and his extraordinary civil-engineering achievement. Spanning the Gilded Age engagingly connects the stories of the engineers, financiers, politicians, and railroaders who united two halves of a continent.

— Albert Churella, Kennesaw State University

Brown serves up a rich slab of American history, from sweaty workers digging to bedrock below the Mississippi River to the rarified heights of transatlantic finance. Fabulous insights on city growth, bold engineering, railroad tangles, and classic robber barons like Andrew Carnegie and Jay Gould.

— Thomas J. Misa, author of Leonardo to the Internet

Skullduggery, robber baron intrigue, and engineering genius on the shores of the Mississippi River after the Civil War: John Brown tells the gripping, many-sided genesis story of Eadss graceful, steel-arched bridge at St. Louis, set in an era when steel was still an experimental material and no one knew quite what to do with it.

— Robert Kanigel, author of The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency

Spanning the Gilded Age

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