The Role of Architect-Engineers in the Development of American Building Construction Technology, 1850-1920

Individual Award, Baltimore MD

Investigators

Abstract

SES 99-11093 - Sara E. Wermiel (Independent Scholar) -- "The Role of Architect-Engineers in the Development of American Building Construction Technology, 1850-1920" In the nineteenth century, America went through a revolution in building construction as momentous as the one that transformed manufacturing. While American designers did not adopt structural iron until roughly the 1850s, in the second half of the century they quickly caught up with, and went on to surpass, the Europeans. By 1900, the United States had the world's most sophisticated construction technology. American designers had created skeleton frame construction, a development that forever changed commercial construction and one that made the American icon -- the skyscraper -- possible. This project suggests that an important factor in this development -- and one that has been little explored -- was the distinctive technical inclinations of many American architects, who also functioned as engineers. The willingness and ability of these architect-engineers to use new materials -- e.g., structural iron and hollow tile -- and to solve technical problems associated with ever larger structures distinguished them from their colleagues in, for example, Great Britain and France. In the 1890s, with the number of technological complex projects increasing, a new engineering field, architectural or structural engineering, took shape. Architects began to hire engineers to handle structural design, a development that dismayed many of the architect engineers. The study will explore the divergent views within the profession over the proper role and responsibilities of architects with respect to technical matters, as revealed in the debates over licensing and training of architects. Nevertheless, the separation of architecture from engineering took hold. The last part of the study will examine the consequences of this separation on the pace and nature of development in building construction technology in the early twentieth century. Historians of engineering, on the one hand, and of architecture, on the other, are generally unacquainted with the cross-discipline work, and contributions to technological development, of the nineteenth century architect-engineers. The goal of this project is to bring the important work of these men to light. It will also examine the reasons for the demise of the type, and consequences of design specialization -- the separation of architecture from engineering -- on technological development.