Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Engineering Dept.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company's "Engineer Department" was first created on April 9, 1847, when the Board of Directors appointment of J. Edgar Thomson, a Pennsylvania native then serving on the Georgia Railroad & Banking Company, as Chief Engineer. At the same time, and without Thomson's approval, they appointed Edward Miller and William Barclay Foster, Jr., both of whom had long experience with the Pennsylvania Public Works and Pennsylvania railroad companies, as Associate Engineers of the Eastern and Western Divisions, respectively. Serving under them was a large field corps, many of whom later rose to high standing in the profession or entered the ranks of the PRR's management.

The Engineer Department was the only official department during the company's first three years and reported jointly to the President and the Board. Thomson made his first formal report to the Board on June 12, 1848, in which he adopted a line very close to that actually built, though the exact location required four more years to perfect. Thomson, who had been given relatively free rein in Georgia, had little respect for Presidents Samuel V. Merrick and William C. Patterson, neither of whom was an engineer. He constantly appealed around them (as he saw it) or over their heads (as they saw it) to sympathetic members of the Board, a situation that Merrick and Patterson found intolerable. The contest of wills came to a head in the election of February 1852 which put Thomson in the president's chair, while Merrick and Patterson resigned from the company in defeat.

After Thomson was elevated to the presidency, Miller succeeded him as Chief Engineer. The company issued a new organization manual effective December 1, 1852, at which time the engineer corps was formally titled the Construction Department. Edward Miller in turn resigned in April 1853 and was succeeded by Herman Haupt, perhaps the most brilliant and certainly the most truculent member of the engineer corps. After the completion of main line between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, Haupt resigned at the end of June 1855, the post of Chief Engineer was abolished, and the engineer corps was dissolved. Its members moved on to other railroads, while a few formed the nucleus of the Transportation Department. For the following five and a half years, most civil engineering was maintenance of way work.

Railroad civil engineering always breaks down into two broad categories, "design and construction" for entirely new work, and "maintenance of way" to keep existing facilities in repair. The former, especially in more extreme circumstances, required that its practitioners have the ability to conceptualize and perform both spatial and quantitative analysis, including the ability to estimate costs and monetary returns to expenditure. While engineers of construction also had to supervise the work of large work gangs, the engineer of maintenance of way was primarily a manager who was required to ensure that platoons of workers, from unskilled "muscle" laborers to the skilled craftsmen of the building trades, met the specifications established by the designers.

Maintenance of way was thus conceived as a function of the Transportation (Operating) Department, where with "conducting transportation" (running the trains) and maintenance of equipment, it formed the totality of running the railroad and keeping it in repair. The railroad was divided into sections, each maintained by a section gang under the control of a supervisor. Several sections made up a division under the control of a Resident Engineer (Assistant Engineer after 1870, Division Engineer after 1909). By 1863, these divisions had become congruent with the Superintendent's Division, and the Resident/Assistant Engineer a staff officer of the Superintendent. The Assistant Engineer typically began as a rodman in a construction corps, but reflecting his primarily managerial duties, his promotional path usually led first to a superintendency and then upward in the Operating Department. For the diligent Assistant Engineer, there was no limit. Presidents Cassatt, McCrea, and Clement all followed this course. By way of contrast, the engineers of construction were primarily specialized staff officers who at most could hope to be Chief Engineer.

Of course, most Division Engineers did not experience such stellar ascents. The post, and the Division Superintendency directly above it, were proving grounds from which only the very cream rose to the top. From the mid-1870s onward, their work was strictly monitored by the annual fall inspection, in which the President and the entire senior staff carefully viewed main lines from special cars, while the riding quality of the track was tested by various on-board instruments.

There was a third path for selecting and promoting the best engineering talent that lay entirely outside both the Engineering and Transportation Departments, and that was to bring in people at the top as assistants to the President. J. Edgar Thomson, who established the PRR's organization and himself an engineer, felt the need of a special assistant to oversee projects of an engineering nature free from entanglement in day-to-day operations. The first such assistant was William Jackson Palmer, whose principal assignment was the development of coal-burning locomotives. Palmer enlisted for Civil War duty, in which he distinguished himself, and after the war went on to build and head the Denver & Rio Grande Railway in Colorado. Subsequent assistants were assigned to civil engineering tasks involving new lines. They were chosen on the basis of both field experience and demonstrated executive ability.

Thomson next chose George B. Roberts, a younger man very like himself in background and temperament, in 1862. Roberts was promoted to a vice presidency in 1869 and placed on a fast track for the top office. Thomson then chose Strickland Kneass, a member of an established Philadelphia engineering family, in 1872. Thomas A. Scott, who succeeded Thomson in 1874, was not an engineer, but he retained Kneass as an assistant and added Joseph Napoleon Du Barry, who had begun as a rodman on the original PRR engineer corps. Thomson ensured that his values would live on in the management in the person of George B. Roberts, first as First Vice President until 1880, and then as President. Du Barry was elevated to a vice presidency in 1882, and Kneass, already in poor health, died two years later.

Du Barry took Samuel Rea as his assistant in 1888, but Rea balked at working for Du Barry and left the following year to be Chief Engineer for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad's electrified tunnels under the city of Baltimore. Armed with this valuable experience, Rea returned to the PRR as assistant to Roberts in 1892 and became a vice president on Robert's death in 1897. Du Barry died at the end of 1892, and his assistant Joseph U. Crawford then became Rea's subordinate with the title Engineer of Branch Lines.

The period between the completion of the PRR main line in 1854 and the Civil War was punctuated by the Panic of 1857 which greatly curtailed railroad-building. During this time the PRR engaged in relatively little new construction. It did invest heavily in lines that were building westward from Pittsburgh and smaller feeder lines in the east, and in some case found work there for former PRR engineers, but on its own lines there was little but maintenance of way work.

By 1859, maintenance of way was under the supervision of William Hasell Wilson as Resident Engineer. Wilson was a third generation civil engineer whose father Maj. John Wilson had been Engineer of the Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad in the late 1820s and early 1830s. As a new wave of plant expansion began, Wilson was appointed to a revived office of Chief Engineer on April 1, 1861. In matters of new work, Wilson reported to President Thomson, while reporting to the General Superintendent in matters of maintenance of way. In this capacity, Wilson also had general oversight of the Resident Engineer on each division who reported directly to the division superintendents.

By January 1, 1868, the amount of new work had increased to the point that the duties were divided again. William H. Wilson became Chief Engineer of Construction at the head of a Construction Department, while the maintenance of way duties were given to his son, John A. Wilson, as Chief Engineer of Maintenance of Way. John A. Wilson supervised Resident Engineers on each Division. John A. Wilson resigned to become Chief Engineer for a series of subsidiary companies on April 1, 1870, and he supervised the construction of branch lines for the next five years. Thomas I. Heizmann was appointed Wilson's successor as Chief Engineer of Maintenance of Way, but he resigned on August 1, 1874. William H. Brown then became Engineer of Maintenance of Way. With the creation of Grand Divisions and the three-level line-and-staff system in the Transportation Department during 1873-1874, Principal Assistant Engineers were placed in charge of maintenance of way on the Grand Divisions, reporting to both the General Superintendent and the Engineer of Maintenance of Way.

As Chief Engineer of Construction, William H. Wilson was now responsible for all new construction, building plans, and real estate maps and deeds, while acting in an advisory capacity on maintenance of way issues. His title was changed to Chief Engineer of Construction and Consulting Engineer on March 23, 1873, and to Consulting Engineer on January 1, 1874. On July 1, 1874, the Construction Department and post of Chief Engineer were abolished, as the amount of new work fell off substantially with the coming of the depression of 1873-1879. William H. Wilson continued to advise on construction projects through the end of 1875, but his primary duty was organizing the new Real Estate Department, which he headed for the next ten years.

With the elimination of the Construction Department, William's son Joseph M. Wilson was named Engineer of Bridges and Buildings on the staff of the General Manager. He had designed many of the PRR's stations. On August 26, 1874, the younger Wilson was given partial leave to become Consulting Engineer to the upcoming Centennial Exhibition. Wilson designed the two largest buildings at the fair, the main Exhibit Building and Machinery Hall. On the success of his Centennial work, Joseph, his brother John A. Wilson, and Frederick G. Thorne, who had worked under them on the PRR, formed the partnership of Wilson Brothers & Company on January 1, 1876. Joseph M. Wilson continued to do work for the PRR but now under a monthly retainer that lasted into the 1880s.

With the end of the depression, the post of Chief Engineer was restored on June 1, 1881, with the appointment of William H. Brown, who had been Engineer of Maintenance of Way since August 1, 1874. Again, the office combined construction and maintenance of way duties and reported to the General Manager. The Engineers of Maintenance of Way became staff positions at the Grand Divisional level. It was Brown who had charge of the tremendous modernization of the PRR's infrastructure between the late 1880s and 1906. He is especially noted for his advocacy of stone over iron bridges in crossing non-navigable streams. The wisdom of this choice seemed to be confirmed early on when his new stone arch bridge at Johnstown successfully withstood the huge mass of debris swept against it by the 1889 Johnstown Flood. For navigable rivers, Brown replaced older iron bridges with heavier steel ones, usually with swing draw spans at the shipping channel.

On March 1, 1893, Brown was moved to the staff of Vice President Charles E. Pugh, and in this position was given general supervision of new construction only. Joseph T. Richards was named Engineer of Maintenance of Way on the staff of General Manager Sutherland M. Prevost. At the same time, the post of Engineer of Branch Lines was created for Joseph U. Crawford under the supervision of Assistant to the President Samuel Rea. This divided responsibility for new work continued until the end of 1910.

In the meantime as new construction mushroomed under the Cassatt administration, a new and expanded Engineering Department had been created on November 1, 1902, with Brown as its head. He continued to report to Vice President Charles E. Pugh until March 1909, after which he reported to Samuel Rea, who as Vice President had the general supervision of all new construction. This permitted the company to dispense with the post of Engineer of Branch Lines when Joseph U. Crawford retired at the end of 1910, so that responsibility for all new work was reunited in the Engineering Department.

Rea continued to supervise the department after he became President until the coming of the United States Railroad Administration in 1918. Brown controlled an ever-growing staff of assistants and an Engineer of Bridges & Buildings. Brown retired at the end of February 1906 and was succeeded as Chief Engineer by his assistant Alexander C. "Capie" Shand. Shand switched from masonry to cheaper, all-concrete construction for bridges, retaining walls and the like. Shand completed the projects of the Cassatt, McCrea and Rea administrations.

The United States Railroad Administration, a government agency, took over the operation of the railroads as part of the federal war effort at the beginning of 1918. The USRA was able to override ICC regulations and antitrust laws and so run the American railroad network as a single system. The USRA formally detached the railroads from their corporate owners on June 1, 1918. Elisha Lee became Federal Manager for much of Lines East, and all operating departments now reported to him. The old PRR Executive Department was reconstituted as a skeleton staff that received and disbursed the USRA's rental payments and represented the interests of the stockholders against the government. Horace C. Booz was appointed Corporate Engineer on July 15, 1918, to advise the corporate management on engineering matters.

When the railroads were returned to private ownership on March 1, 1920, the PRR took advantage of the change to eliminate the longstanding division between the old Lines East and Lines West organizations. Instead of two Executive Departments in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh united only by a common President, the PRR was now divided into four "Regions" under a single Executive Department in Philadelphia. There was now a single Engineering Department headed by Chief Engineer Alexander C. Shand, who reported to the Vice President in Charge of Operations instead of to President Rea as before the war. The maintenance of way function remained in the Transportation Department, with regional Chief Engineers of Maintenance of Way reporting to the regional General Managers.

Shand was followed as Chief Engineer by Thomas J. Skillman in February 1927. Skillman supervised the beginnings of the long-distance electrification project, which were completed under his successor, William D. Wiggins (1936-1943). At the same time, Chief Engineers were created in each of the three surviving Regions to lighten the work load of the Philadelphia office. However, these regional Chief Engineers were part of the central Engineering Department and were made jointly responsible to the regional Vice Presidents only in October 1938.

The regional Chief Engineers were abolished under the Nine-Region Organization of November 1, 1955. To replace them, the Engineering Department created Area Engineers in major cities, including Pittsburgh and Chicago, on December 1, 1955. Each of the nine Regions had a Regional Engineer on the staff of the Regional Manager for maintenance of way work. When the Nine-Region scheme was abandoned in favor of three Regions and Divisions on March 1, 1964, the Regional Engineers were replaced by Engineers of Maintenance of Way & Structures at the regional level.

The PRR's last Chief Engineer, Chester J. Henry, retired at the end of 1965. On January 1, 1966, the Engineering Department was placed under J. Benton Jones as Vice President, Engineering & Real Estate. This change reflected the fact that a large share of the PRR's engineering efforts was going into ancillary real estate and air rights development, such as Penn Center in Philadelphia or Madison Square Garden in New York. Several Assistant Chief Engineers managed day-to-day activities. Maintenance of way was raised to equal rank with the appointment of J. F. Piper, Jr., as Chief Maintenance of Way Officer on August 1, 1966. These arrangements continued until the Penn Central merger on February 1, 1968.

The PRR's Engineering Department was responsible for all civil engineering and construction work. This included surveying proposed and new lines, designing gradings, trackwork, bridges and buildings, making plans and specifications, supervising the letting of contracts and the performances of contractors in the field, disbursing funds and holding the contractors' security deposits, and transferring completed work to the Transportation Department. The department's responsibilities covered new lines, changes of grade or alignment, multiple-tracking, grade crossing separations, overhead and undergrade bridges, signal systems, yards, shops and engine houses, fuel and water facilities, water supply reservoirs and pipelines, freight and passenger car yards, passenger stations, freight warehouses, piers, coal and ore-handling machinery, grain elevators and livestock facilities. The department also prepared all maps, plans and graphics used in memoranda, reports, presentations or law case exhibits and maintained several different series of maps of record covering the entire PRR system and working drawings of all bridges and structures.

The PRR's largest construction project, New York's Pennsylvania Station and its associated tunnels and yards, was considered too difficult for the company's engineering staff as then constituted. For this purpose, a special Board of Engineers consisting of outside experts was created under the supervision of Vice President Samuel Rea on January 11, 1902. Subsequently, terminal improvements in other cities were the work of committees and special offices, although assigned personnel came from within the PRR's own departments. The largest project, the Philadelphia Improvements, was supervised by a committee during the planning phase beginning in 1911, and by a Chief Engineer, Philadelphia Improvements reporting directly to Executive Vice President Elisha Lee beginning in 1927. The Newark (N.J.) Improvements of 1929-1935 were under the direction of Louis P. Struble, and the reconstruction of Pennsylvania Station and Madison Square Garden of 1961-1968 (the "New York Improvements") of H. J. McNally. George Baylor was appointed Chief Engineer, Pittsburgh Improvements in 1966 to supervise the redevelopment that became the abortive Penn Central Park project.

By the 1890s, the PRR had its own staff architect first attached to the Office of Engineer of Maintenance of Way and then to the Office of Bridges & Buildings. This was William H. Cookman who served from around 1894 into at least the early 1930s and was responsible for the distinctive look of the company's smaller, standardized buildings. However, when the situation or pressure from the local community called for something more imposing or complex, the PRR engaged outside architects, even for relatively small stations. Earlier, many distinctive PRR stations and other buildings had been designed by the Wilson brothers, John and Joseph, even before they left to establish their own firm. They designed many of the Main Line stations, including the largest at Ardmore and Bryn Mawr, and well as the Main Line homes of several PRR executives and other industrialists. Their most notable commission was the original Broad Street Station of 1881.

From the mid-1880s to the early 1900s, the PRR also awarded a number of commissions to Frank Furness and the firm of Furness & Evans. The largest was for the expanded Broad Street Station of 1893, although they also produced two successive stations at Wilmington, Del., a similar structure at East Liberty, Pa., and many suburban stations in the Philadelphia area. However, the highly personal, somewhat Victorian style that characterized Furness's large buildings received little favor beyond his regional home base and was considered old-fashioned even before his last PRR stations were finished.

The PRR finally found a kindred spirit in architect Daniel H. Burnham of Chicago. More a planner and organizer than a designer, Burham easily moved in step to the PRR's system of regular meetings and reports. Burnham, and his successor firms ending with Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, were given station commissions of ever greater complexity, from Grand Rapids and Columbus to Pittsburgh, Washington, and Philadelphia's 30th Street and Suburban Stations. In a concession to local sensibilities, McKim, Mead & White received the commission for Pennsylvania Station in New York and the later station at Newark, N.J.

After 1935, industrial designer Raymond Loewy produced a number of interiors and makeovers for older stations as well as designing new ones. He also executed a little-known and rather spectacular design for what eventually became Penn Center in the late 1940s. However, since Loewy could not stamp plans as an architect or engineer, that part of the work was executed by PRR staff. Later, architect Lester C. Tichy joined Loewy's office and produced a number of the designs that went out over Loewy's signature. In the early 1950s, Tichy started his own practice and continued to receive commissions from the PRR after Loewy's contract was terminated. Tichy was responsible for the Long Island Rail Road's "new look" but also the modern ticket office with the fluorescent canopy that disfigured the Main Waiting Room of Pennsylvania Station in its last years. During the 1950s and 1960s the PRR worked closely with a number of real estate developers and their house architects, and with renowned planner Edmund N. Bacon and reigning Philadelphia architect Vincent G. Kling in the development of Penn Center.

From the description of Agency history record. (Hagley Museum & Library). WorldCat record id: 164035945