James Buchanan Eads
James Buchanan Eads | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | March 8, 1887 | (aged 66)
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Civil engineer |
Spouses | Martha Nash Dillon
(m. 1845–1852)Eunice Hagerman Eads
(m. 1854–1887) |
Children | One son, three step-daughters |
Awards | Albert Medal (1884) |
Captain James Buchanan Eads (May 23, 1820 – March 8, 1887) was a world-renowned
Eads' great Mississippi River Bridge at St. Louis was designated a National Historic Landmark by the Department of the Interior in 1964 and on October 21, 1974 was listed as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers. It was also awarded a Special Award of Recognition by the American Institute of Steel Construction in 1974 on the 100th anniversary of its entry into service. Eads' design for the jetties of the south pass of the Mississippi river was also designated as National Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks in 1982.
Early life and education
Eads was born in
James Eads was largely
Family
Around 1842, Eads fell in love with Martha Dillon, a woman related to him by marriage. Martha's father was Patrick Dillon, a prominent St. Louis businessman. Patrick did not approve of the couple, as he wanted Martha to marry someone with money and influence. In October 1845, James and Martha wed without her father's consent.[5]
Martha moved in with Eads' parents in LeClaire, Iowa while Eads stayed behind in St. Louis to set up a glass works. Although their living arrangement was supposed to be temporary, the failure of his glass business made it permanent. Eads had many debts to pay off from the failed business and he went back to working in salvage.[5]
Martha died in October 1852 of cholera. She did not live to see Eads become successful. Five years after her death, when Eads retired from working on the river, he had amassed a fortune of $500,000.[5]
Nine years after Martha's death, in 1861, Eads remarried.[5]
Fortune
When he was twenty-two, Eads designed a salvage boat and showed the drawings to two shipbuilders, Calvin Case and William Nelson. Although Eads had no previous experience and no capital for the project, Case and Nelson were impressed with him and the three became partners.[4]
At that time, salvaging wrecks from the
Civil War
In 1861, after the outbreak of the
. The river ironclads were a vital element in the highly successful Federal offensive into Tennessee, Kentucky and upper Mississippi (February–June, 1862). Eads corresponded frequently with Navy officers of the Western Flotilla, and used their "combat lessons learned" to improve vessels during post-combat repairs, and incorporate improvements into succeeding generations of gunboats. By the end of the war he would build more than 30 river ironclads.The last were so hardy that the Navy sent them into service in the
During the war, Eads wrote a check to the War Department for $1,000 to help homeless Confederates and Union sympathizers. After the war, he held a fair to raise money for the thousands of homeless refugees in St. Louis.[4]
Mississippi River bridge
Eads designed and built the first road and rail bridge to cross the Mississippi River at
Mississippi River designs
The Mississippi in the 100-mile-plus stretch between the port of New Orleans, Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico frequently suffered from silting up of its outlets, stranding ships or making parts of the river unnavigable for a period of time. Eads solved the problem with a wooden jetty system that narrowed the main outlet of the river, causing the river to speed up and cut its channel deeper, allowing year-round navigation. Eads offered to build the jetties first, and charge the government later.[12] If he was successful, and the jetties caused the river to cut a channel 30 feet deep for 20 years, the government agreed to pay him $8 million. Eads was successful. The jetty system was installed in 1876 and the channel was cleared in February 1877.[13] Journalist Joseph Pulitzer, who had known Eads for five years, invested $20,000 in this project.[14] A flood in 1890 brought calls for a similar system for the entire Mississippi Valley. A jetty system would prevent the floods by deepening the main channel. However, there were concerns about the ability of water moving through a jetty system to cut out the rock and clay on the river bottom.[15] The development of navigable channels at the mouth of the Mississippi River made Eads famous.
In 1982, the American Society of Civil Engineers designated the south pass jetties as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.[16]
Other work
Eads designed a gigantic railway system intended for construction at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, which would carry ocean-going ships across the isthmus from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean; this attracted some interest but was never constructed.
In 1884 he became the first U.S. citizen awarded the
Later life and death
Although he came from a humble background, Eads' accomplishments throughout his life earned him wealth and renown. He was so revered that Scientific American proposed that he run for president of the United States.[4]
Eads died while on vacation in
Legacy
The towns of Eads, Tennessee; Eads, Colorado; and Port Eads, Louisiana are named for him.
U.S. Route 50 through Lawrenceburg, his hometown, is called Eads Parkway in his honor.
Eads Street is a street running parallel to U.S. Route 1/Richmond Highway in Crystal City, Arlington Virginia.
In 1920, Eads was added to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans colonnade, located on the grounds of the Bronx Community College in New York.
Eads is memorialized at Washington University in St. Louis by James B. Eads Hall, a 19th-century building long associated with science and technology. Eads Hall was the site of Professor Arthur Holly Compton's Nobel Prize–winning experiments in electromagnetic radiation. Today Eads Hall continues to serve Washington University as the site of a number of facilities including the Arts and Sciences Computing Center. Eads Hall was the gift of Captain Eads's daughter Mrs. James Finney How.
Each year the Academy of Science of St. Louis awards the James B. Eads Award recognizing a distinguished individual for outstanding achievement in science and technology.
Eads is recognized with a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.[17]
In 1927, the deans of America's engineering colleges vote Eads one of the top five engineers of all time, an accolade he shared with
Eads' great Mississippi River Bridge at St. Louis was designated a National Historic Landmark by the Department of the Interior in 1964 and on October 21, 1974 was listed as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers. It was also awarded a Special Award of Recognition by the American Institute of Steel Construction in 1974 on the 100th anniversary of its entry into service.
Notes
- ^ How 1900: p. 105. "His reputation was world-wide."
- ^ How 1900: pp. 118-119.
- ^ "Secrets of A Master Builder". PBS. Retrieved September 26, 2012.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Shepley, Carol Ferring (2008). Movers and Shakers, Scalawags and Suffragettes: Tales from Bellefontaine Cemetery. St. Louis, Missouri: Missouri History Museum.
- ^ a b c d PBS. "People & Events: James Buchanan Eads, 1820 —1887". PBS American Experience. PBS. Retrieved June 10, 2016.
- ^ How 1900: p. 12.
- ^ How 1900: pp. 25-26. Eads received "a telegram calling him to Washington for consultation on the best method of defending and occupying the Western rivers."
- ^ Gunboats on the Mississippi
- ^ How 1900: pp. 32-33.
- ^ "Ironclads" Archived 2011-02-04 at the Wayback Machine, St. Louis County, Missouri, US GenNet
- New International Encyclopedia(1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.
- ^ Eads Jetties Plaque, Fort Jackson, LA.
- ^ "The Mississippi Jetties.; Operation of the System Shown in the Recent Flood from the Ohio River" (pdf). New York Times. February 5, 1877. p. 1. Retrieved January 10, 2009.
- HarperCollins Publishers. pp. 103 and 112.
- ^ "Fighting Against Nature; How to Prevent the Recurring (sic) Mississippi Floods. The Jetty Plan of No Practical Benefit in Solving this Important Problem for the Country" (pdf). New York Times. 1890-04-28. p. 1. Retrieved January 10, 2009.
- ^ Anon. "EADS SOUTH PASS NAVIGATION WORKS". American Society of Civil Engineers. ASCE. Archived from the original on 23 April 2021. Retrieved 20 May 2021.
- ^ St. Louis Walk of Fame. "St. Louis Walk of Fame Inductees". stlouiswalkoffame.org. Archived from the original on 31 October 2012. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
References
- How, Louis (1900). James B. Eads. The Riverside Biographical Series (First ed.). Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company. pp. 1–120. ISBN 0-8369-5333-9 – via Internet Archive.
Testing.
- Weingardt, Richard G. (July 2005). "James Buchanan Eads". Leadership and Management in Engineering. 5 (3). Washington: American Society of Civil Engineers: 70–74. ISSN 1532-6748.
- ISBN 0-684-84002-2.
- Petroski, Henry. Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and the Spanning of America.
External links
- Works by or about James Buchanan Eads at Internet Archive
- James Buchanan Eads at Structurae
- PBS – Secrets of a Master Builder Archived 2017-02-15 at the Wayback Machine
- National Park Service, Vicksburg National Military Park website on City class ironclads
- Building the City Class Ironclads Documentary
- James Buchanan Eads at Find a Grave
- Texts on Wikisource:
- "Eads, James Buchanan". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900.
- "New International Encyclopedia. 1905.
- "Eads, James Buchanan". The Nuttall Encyclopædia. 1907.
- "Eads, James Buchanan". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.
- "Eads, James Buchanan". The New Student's Reference Work. 1914.
- "Eads, James Buchanan". Encyclopedia Americana. 1920.
- "Eads, James Buchanan". Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921.
- National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir