Preserving the Profession’s Achievements: The ASCE Historic Civil … · 2020-01-02 · structured effort by ASCE, as the lead society [for civil engi-neers], to promote this history

AMERICANS ARE USUALLY more interested in the future than the past—in what can be, rather than what once was. So it’s ironic that the

push to highlight the history and achieve-ments of the civil engineering profession—both here and abroad—got its start in the United States.

Since the mid-1960s, ASCE’s History and Heritage Pro-gram has championed America’s rich civil engineering heri-tage, according to “ASCE History and Heritage Programs,” an article written by Alan Prasuhn, P.E., F.ASCE, and the late Neal FitzSimons, who was a fellow of ASCE (Journal of Pro-fessional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice, ASCE, Vol. 129, No. 1, January, 2003).

There were precedents for engineering-related organiza-

tions’ efforts to preserve their professions’ his-tories, including the establishment of the So-ciety for the History of Technology in 1958, and the Newcomen Society in 1920, in Lon-don, the latter dedicated to the history of en-gineering and technology. But according to

Prasuhn and FitzSimons, “What was [clearly] lacking was a structured effort by ASCE, as the lead society [for civil engi-neers], to promote this history and heritage.”

According to the authors, the seed of the idea to estab-lish a history program within ASCE was planted in fall 1947. FitzSimons, then a civil engineering student at Cornell, de-scribed a meeting between fellow engineering students and the dean of the university’s College of Engineering, S. C. Hol-lister, to discuss the school’s fi rst “Engineers’ Day” following P

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[36] C i v i l E n g i n e e r i n g J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 0

. HI S TO RY LE S S ON.

Preserving the Profession’s Achievements: The ASCE Historic Civil

Engineering Landmark Program

The fi rst ASCE Historic Civil Engineering Landmark

was awarded in 1966 to the Bollman Truss Bridge

in Savage, Maryland.

© 2020 AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CIVIL ENGINEERS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

World War II. “As with most meetings, it became a bit tedious and my eyes wandered to the books on the shelves of his den library which surrounded us,” Fitz-Simons wrote. “A set of four large tomes caught my eye and during coffee-time, I browsed through them.” They were a series, D’Architecture Hydraulique by Bernard For-est de Bélidor, covering engineering mechanics, mills and waterwheels, pumps, harbors, and sea works. “They were fascinating!” he wrote.

FitzSimons credited this incident with sparking his interest in engineering history, but it wasn’t until near-ly two decades later that this seed bore fruit. In October 1963, FitzSimons, who was very active in ASCE, found there was still no program within the Society that fo-cused on history, so he proposed one at a meeting with the board of direction. At the board’s behest, he formally wrote to William “Pete” Wisely, ASCE’s executive direc-tor at the time. The following spring, he received a let-ter from then-president Waldo Bowman, appointing him to the Committee on the History and Heritage of American Civil Engineering. (The committee’s name has since been changed to the History and Heritage Committee.) The group, as the writers (and history it-self) attest, has fl ourished ever since.

The group was initially led by Gail Hathaway, who served as president of ASCE in 1951, but after Hatha-way stepped down, Fitz Simons led the committee for al-most 25 years. Since his tenure, the committee has been chaired by a series of prominent fi gures, including Prasuhn (1990–1997); engineering historian Henry Petroski, Ph.D. P.E., Dist.M.ASCE (2000–2013); Bernard (Bernie) G. Dennis Jr., M.ASCE (2014–2016); and Jerry R. Rogers, Ph.D., P.E., D.WRE, Dist.M.ASCE, who is the cur-rent chair and also held the role between the stints of Prasuhn and Petroski.

At the heart of the committee’s work is the ASCE Historic Civil Engi-neering Landmark Program (HCEL), whose roster today totals more than 280 structures and infrastructure proj-ects that refl ect key advancements in civil engineering. From the get-go,

the committee laid out the criteria by which the works were to be judged. According to Prasuhn and FitzSimons, nominated projects had to “be at least 50 years old, and have made a signifi -cant contribution to both the civil en-gineering profession and at least a ma-jor region of the United States.”

Landmark nominations were to come from ASCE sections, as they do today. Those projects selected receive permanent ASCE plaques to be installed at the project sites, and the sec-tions create public relations events to share the civil engineer-

ing achievements with the general public. The result is a who’s who list of civil engineering landmarks stretching across the country and celebrating projects both famous and unheralded.

Any member may identify a project that he or she believes is worthy of nomination, but the nomination ultimately requires the approval of the section before submission to the committee. The nomination package indicates who the civil engineers were, why the project was signifi cant, and what set it apart from similar proj-ects. Nominations also required a letter of support from the entity that maintains the site, agreeing to allow the plaque to be displayed.

When the packages are received by ASCE staff, they are distributed to the eight-member committee. “We re-view and determine whether we agree that it meets the criteria,” says Dennis. Once the committee approves it, it gets sent to the ASCE board of direction for fi nal approval.

In 1979, international projects were added to those considered for nomination, with even tougher stan-dards. The goal is to honor projects that represent civil engineering fi rsts or signifi cant achievements in their countries or projects whose principles were applied worldwide. They had to be, Dennis says, “among the most signifi cant civil engineering landmarks in the world.”P

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J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 0 C i v i l E n g i n e e r i n g [37]

The original ASCE plaque at the fi rst

landmark was stolen. A second was accidentally

removed and later recovered. Today, three plaques commemorate the bridge’s history on

one side of the crossing.

Neal FitzSimons, the key force behind the

creation of the History and Heritage Commit-tee, attended the dedi-cation ceremony for the Bollman Truss Bridge.


ASCE either works with its international sections or part-ners with local engineering societies in host countries to pre-pare and submit landmark packages. The fi rst international landmark, awarded in 1979, was England’s Iron Bridge, the world’s fi rst iron bridge. “It set the stage for using iron in bridges and ultimately steel, so it was an obvious predecessor to all the bridge work that came after it,” says Dennis. There are now more than 45 international landmarks in 27 coun-tries, including archeological sites in Petra, Jordan, and Ma-chu Picchu, Peru; the Panama Canal; and the Sydney Har-bour Bridge.

“Our international landmark program also was a big step in getting other countries interested in their history,” says Prasuhn, now retired. He points out that other engineering disciplines, from electrical to mechanical, have adopted simi-lar heritage programs.

The committee used to meet twice a year, concurrent with the biannual meetings of the board of direction. But the ad-vent of new technologies has made it possible for members instead to meet in person once a year and conduct other meet-ings via conference calls. The committee receives only a hand-ful of nominations each year—one or two in a typical year, maybe four or fi ve in a good year, Dennis says. And the com-mittee can usually take its time with evaluations; there is no deadline for deliberations, which can range from six months to well over a year.

Occasionally the committee is pressed to make decisions in time for the anniversaries of nominated projects. “We do our best to accommodate that,” says Dennis. “And in many cases, we can. But if it requires a little bit more review, we say, ‘We’re sorry, but we just can’t fi nish it by that time.’” Accu-racy trumps deadlines.

There is typically not much drama in the deliberations, Dennis reports. The hard work has been done by sections, so the committee can proceed “professionally and without

much fanfare.” But there are discussions about the accuracy of the facts of some nominations. The committee’s job is not to blindly accept the story the nominators tell of their would-be landmark but to verify it.

There is, however, the occasional bit of confl ict. For exam-ple, the committee recognized the Victoria Falls Bridge, over the Zambezi River between Zambia and Zimbabwe, and lat-er received an angry letter from a British engineer accusing ASCE of claiming credit for designing the bridge (which it didn’t). Then there was the time that the plaque for the very fi rst landmark, the 1852 Bollman Truss Bridge in Savage, Maryland (designated in 1966), was stolen. Then its replace-ment was accidentally removed by city maintenance work-ers. There are now three plaques at one end of the bridge—the second ASCE plaque, which was found, a National Park Service plaque, and a plaque honoring FitzSimons. Another ASCE plaque has been mounted at the other end of the bridge.

Rogers recalls going to the top of the San Jacinto Monu-ment near Houston to celebrate its dedication as a landmark during an ASCE Texas Section conference. He and a colleague, Stan Sarman, “decided to buy a cake in the form of the mon-ument, but the refrigerated cake started slumping on the warm Houston afternoon. Luckily, we cut and served the cake before any structural cake failure!”

Of course, not every proposal results in a designation, but those within the United States that don’t pass muster at the national level can still be designated as landmarks at the state and local levels. Larger states like Texas and California have many such landmarks.

There are hidden, sometimes ethical, challenges to a pro-gram like this. What happens when a commercial developer that would benefi t from the designation of a project is in-volved in the nomination package? “We have to be very care-ful about whether or not there was a really strong argument for approval of the package,” Dennis says. Still, it’s possible P

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[38] C i v i l E n g i n e e r i n g J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 0

England’s Iron Bridge, the world’s pioneering iron bridge, was designated the fi rst international ASCE Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1979.


for a project to have a commercial ambition and still be a sig-nifi cant landmark. “The trick is to take the time to fi nd out.”

Of course, designating landmarks is not the same as pre-serving them. “It’s usually not the case that the preservation of a landmark hinges on getting the ASCE designation,” Den-nis says. “Usually you need a champion in place to preserve something.” And of course, civil engineering landmarks can’t be placed in museums. As previously noted in History Les-son, FitzSimons was one of the driving forces behind the cre-ation of the Historic American Engineering Record, which preserves the technical drawings and reports behind signifi -cant projects. (Read “Fifty Years of Preservation: Historic American Engineering Record,” Civil Engineering, January 2019, pages 40–43.)

While the landmark program has helped raise the profi le of civil engineering among the public, the committee has also helped stir interest in engineering heritage among en-gineers themselves. Prasuhn and FitzSimons noted that ear-ly in the committee’s existence, it was diffi cult to fi nd space for historical subject matter at ASCE national conventions. It took until 1972 for a national convention (held in Houston) to feature a session on the landmark program. By America’s bicentennial, history-themed presentations had proliferated across almost every technical track of ASCE’s national conven-tion, which was appropriately held in Philadelphia.

The fi rst international history session took place in Boston in 1979, when a “group of Swiss engineers presented . . . the contributions of the Swiss-American civil engineer, Othmar Ammann,” Prasuhn and FitzSimons wrote. The committee further expanded its reach in the 1980s, sponsoring sessions at Society conferences in Las Vegas, New Orleans, Phila-delphia, and Houston. “At this latter session,” Prasuhn and FitzSimons wrote, “Ralph Peck spoke on his experiences in working with Karl Terzaghi to a standing room only crowd.”

“The history and heritage sessions have always been of high quality and well attended,” they wrote. “On the other hand, [the committee] has not been equally successful in set-ting up stand-alone history and heritage conferences, as ASCEhas persistently maintained, perhaps with good reason, that they would not be fi nancially profi table. When ASCE cut back to one convention a year, [the committee’s] sessions were reduced accordingly.”

But history programs began to gain more prominence in 1996, when a National Congress on History and Heritage was held concurrently with the convention. This event was a collaboration of the national and local history committees, a model that has continued through subsequent conventions. (For information on this year’s event, see asceconvention.org.)

In addition to advancing the landmark program and his-tory-themed sessions at conventions, the committee has con-sistently advanced the cause of American civil engineering heritage in other ways. Its signature publication, the ASCEGuide to History and Heritage Programs, was fi rst published in 1966 and was updated several times; guidance and sample nominations are now available online.

The committee also published articles authored by Fitz-Simons on pioneering civil engineers. As early as 1966, it col-laborated with the Smithsonian Institution to create a “bio-

graphical archive” of some 170 civil engineers born before the Civil War (A Biographical Dictionary of American Civil Engi-neers; New York City: ASCE, 1972). In 1991, ASCE published a second volume of the archive, with 218 entries on engineers born before 1900.

And since 1966, Prasuhn and FitzSimons wrote, the com-mittee has endowed an award “to recognize those persons who through their writing, research or other efforts have made outstanding contributions toward a better knowl-edge of, or appreciation for, the history and heritage of civil engineering.”

Committee members now serve three-year appointments with an option for an additional three years. Then they must step down for three years before returning. Dennis, who joined the committee before these rules were established, has served for 15 years—as a member, vice chair, and chair. Most committee members have been active in the history commit-tees of their branches and sections before they reach the na-tional committee. Dennis says the national committee works to build continuity, so incoming members can benefi t from the wisdom of established members who “understand the in-tricacies of the approval process.”

“It generally takes a couple of years to get familiar with the review process and how diligent you have to be on the process, digging into the facts of these nominations,” he says. “Sometimes you’re asked to look at things that are not [with-in] your expertise. A structural engineer may not be an expert on dams but would still have to be profi cient enough in your engineering skills to be able to review and understand wheth-er or not the package meets the requirements and whether the claims that they’re making are correct. If you don’t un-derstand it, you have to be able to look for the right resources or subject matter experts to help clarify what’s being stated.”

(The committee members also volunteer their time and expertise to review draft versions of History Lesson every month, and the articles remain among the best-read items in Civil Engineering, according to reader surveys.)

Prasuhn recalls FitzSimons, his colleague and close friend who died in 2000, as a leader with an “amazing recall for details of early civil engineering.” He adds that whenever FitzSimons’s children come across an HCEL plaque, they pho-tograph it and send the picture to Prasuhn.

Clearly, FitzSimons’s dream of honoring American civil engineering history shows no signs of diminishing. “The leg-acy of the landmarks program is the educational information on landmarks for the public, students, and civil engineers who research them for classes, reports, or personal reasons and learn background on civil engineering projects,” says Rogers.

The program also serves to give credit where it is due. “One of the ma-jor goals is to help publicize the role civil engineers play in everyday life,” Dennis says. “In that respect, the whole program has been a real benefi t.”

—T.R. WITCHER

T.R. Witcher is a contributing editor to Civil Engineering.

J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 0 C i v i l E n g i n e e r i n g [39]

Witcher


Preserving the Profession’s Achievements: The ASCE Historic Civil … · 2020-01-02 · structured effort by ASCE, as the lead society [for civil engi-neers], to promote this history

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