Engineering, Building, and Architecture - Overview
Not many museums collect houses. The National Museum of American History has four, as well as two outbuildings, 11 rooms, an elevator, many building components, and some architectural elements from the White House. Drafting manuals are supplemented by many prints of buildings and other architectural subjects. The breadth of the museum's collections adds some surprising objects to these holdings, such as fans, purses, handkerchiefs, T-shirts, and other objects bearing images of buildings.
The engineering artifacts document the history of civil and mechanical engineering in the United States. So far, the Museum has declined to collect dams, skyscrapers, and bridges, but these and other important engineering achievements are preserved through blueprints, drawings, models, photographs, sketches, paintings, technical reports, and field notes.
"Engineering, Building, and Architecture - Overview" showing 79 items.
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[View from top of bridge tower of bridge construction. Active no. 13624 stereo interpositive.]
- Notes
- Currently stored in box 1.2.9 [14]
- Same as RSN 427
- Date
- 1895
- 1900-1910
- publisher
- Underwood & Underwood
- H.C. White Co
- Local number
- RSN 426
- Data Source
- Archives Center - NMAH
[View from top of bridge tower of bridge construction.] 13624 interpositive
- Notes
- Currently stored in box 1.2.9 [14]
- Same as RSN 426
- Date
- 1900-1910
- publisher
- Underwood & Underwood
- H.C. White Co
- Local number
- RSN 427
- Video number 06384
- Data Source
- Archives Center - NMAH
Bernz Steam Engine Model
- Description (Brief)
- The museum’s catalogue records indicate that this toy steam engine and boiler is a model number 7 made by Otto Bernz. This model is marked “Otto Bernz, Newark, N.J., Pat. Mar 16, 1911.” Otto Bernz (later BernzOmatic) was a well known gasoline torch manufacturer. This patent refers to patent number 536,192 which was a patent for an automatic pressure torch. It is possible that this model uses the automatic pressure described in the patent to run the horizontal engine.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1911
- ID Number
- MC*328987
- catalog number
- 328987
- accession number
- 278175
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Model Engine
- Description (Brief)
- This metal steam engine model was made by Greville Bathe in 1913. The horizontal table engine has a vertical cylinder and flywheel. The donor of this item, Greville Bathe, was a machinist and engine hobbyist who would fashion his own parts to create model engines.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1913
- ID Number
- MC*329024
- catalog number
- 329024
- accession number
- 278175
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Model Steam Engine
- Description (Brief)
- This metal steam engine model was manufactured by Bathe around 1910. The engine is a vertical table engine with a rotary valve and flywheel. The donor of this item, Greville Bathe, was a machinist and engine hobbyist who would fashion his own parts to create model engines.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1910
- ID Number
- MC*329025
- catalog number
- 329025
- accession number
- 278175
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Shipyard Plate Puller
- Description
- The assembly line revolutionized labor and production in early 20th-century America, and its innovations of prefabricated parts and streamlined processes were applied to shipbuilding in World War I. This tool was used by shipyard workers to align pre-punched holes in standardized hull plates before riveting them together with steam-powered hydraulic riveting guns. Riveting was an exhausting task, but essential for ensuring the overall strength of these mass-produced freighters.
- Beginning in 1918, the U.S. federal government initiated many programs designed to boost morale among workers on the home front. A popular event at shipyards was a riveting competition. The first record was set at the Baltimore Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Company, where a riveting gang drove 658 rivets in eight hours. As reports of this spread across the country, other shipyards tried for their own records and newspapers began offering cash prizes. The record climbed to 2,919 rivets in nine hours, but the United States Shipping Board soon realized that these publicity stunts were wearing out the riveting gangs. The board halted the contests, but began publishing a ranking system of each shipyard’s daily riveting totals to continue the friendly (and productive) rivalries.
- date made
- 1918
- first rivetting competitions
- 1918
- hosted rivetting competitions
- Baltimore Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Company
- regulated rivetting gangs and competitions
- United States Shipping Board
- ID Number
- TR*336914
- catalog number
- 336914
- accession number
- 1979.0413
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
- No Image Available
Cass Gilbert Collection, 1897-1936
- Notes
- American architect of commercial and public buildings, b. Zanesville, Ohio; educated in St. Paul, Minnesota. Firmly supportive of the European tradition and the eastern academic league of architects. Among his many familiar public buildings are the Treasury Annex and the Supreme Court, Washington, D.C., the state capitol buildings of West Virginia, Arkansas, and Minnesota, and the public libraries of St. Louis and Detroit. His most famous building is the Woolworth Building in New York (1913); with its 55 stories and Gothic ornament, it is considered Gilbert's greatest achievement
- Summary
- Correspondence (1919-1932), contracts, statistical data, news clippings, booklets, miscellaneous Gilbert papers, three volumes of specification data of the Supreme Court Buildings, twenty pencil and pastel sketchbooks of Gilbert's periodic travels in Europe, 1897-1932, and a box of miscellaneous unbound sketches, including many for the Supreme Court. The bulk of the collection consists of bound volumes containing photoprints of forty-one Gilbert buildings under construction
- Photographers include Belden & Company (45 Clinton Street, Newark, N.J.) and P. O. Valentine (33 Homestead Park, Newark, N.J.). The photographs are mounted on linen, in cloth-covered loose-leaf binders bearing building or project names. Most photograph volumes each contain more than 100 prints, including duplicates. For example, Vol. 49, on the Seaside Sanatorium (Waterford, Conn.) contains 149 prints from approx. 75 different negatives
- Cite as
- Cass Gilbert Collection, 1897-1936, Archives Center, National Museum of American History
- Date
- 1897
- 1897-1936
- 1890-1940
- 1900-1950
- 1880-1950
- artist.
- Gilbert, Cass 1859-1934
- collector
- Mechanical and Civil Engineering, Division of (NMAH, SI)
- photographer
- Belden & Company 45 Clinton Street, Newark, N.J.
- Valentine, P. O. 33 Homestead, Park, Newark
- Subject
- Woolworth Building New York (N.Y.)
- New York Life Insurance Building
- Supreme Court Building Washington (D.C.)
- Seaside Sanatorium Waterford, Conn
- Local number
- 239827 (NMAH Acc.)
- Data Source
- Archives Center - NMAH
Photograph of Hog Island
- Description
- The United States entered World War I in April 1917. Within days, the federal government created the Emergency Fleet Corporation (EFC) to construct a fleet of merchant ships. The EFC hired the American International Shipbuilding Corporation to build and operate the largest shipyard in the world: Hog Island, near Philadelphia.
- Hog Island’s 50 shipways stretched a mile and a quarter along the Delaware River near Philadelphia. It abutted 846 acres with 250 buildings and 28 outfitting docks, on what is now the site of the Philadelphia International Airport. At its peak, the yard employed around 30,000 workers. Most were men, but some 650 women worked in the yard. Many of the workers had no factory experience, so they were trained on the job.
- At its peak, Hog Island launched a vessel every 5½ days, and its workers built 122 cargo and troop transport ships in four years. Although none saw service before the end of the war, the United States learned how to build large ships quickly on a grand scale from prefabricated parts. This valuable experience would expedite the Liberty and Victory ship building programs of World War II.
- date made
- 1919
- ID Number
- TR*335550.2
- catalog number
- 335550.2
- accession number
- 1977.0003
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
- No Image Available
Lockwood-Greene Records, 1883-2004 (bulk 1915-1930)
- Notes
- Lockwood-Greene is one of the nation's oldest engineering firms, tracing its roots to 1832, when Rhode Island native David Whitman began a machinery repair service. In the years of the early industrial revolution in textile manufacturing, Whitman added mill design services, which began a flourishing consulting business. He traveled throughout New England advising industrialists on the placement, design and construction of factories and the layout of the complicated system of machinery they contained. Whitman died in 1858. Amos Lockwood took over the business which he relocated to Boston. Stephen Greene joined the business in 1882, and the firm's scope expanded to supplying all necessary architectural and engineering services. Greene became president upon Lockwood's death in 1884. Eventually the company designed and built the first factory operated electrically from a remote power plant, as an alternative to steam power. They continued expanding, and eventually were designing a wider variety of structures, including newspaper plants, automotive factories, convention halls and schools. In the 1960s, the company's headquarters relocated to Spartanburg, South Carolina. In 2003, CH2M Hill, a global provider of engineering, construction services, and operations services, acquired the company
- Summary
- The Lockwood-Greene Records are a comprehensive range of documents related to the appraisal, building, construction, design, evaluation, and engineering of facilities for a variety of clients. The material covers the entire period of industrialization of the United States, and, provides a thorough record of the textile industry, both in New England and the South. Some of the textile mills are documented with unusual completeness, showing water and steam power layouts, factory village plans, and landscaping schedules. A broad range of other building typologies is also covered, including projects with public or retail functions, such as early automobile showrooms, hospitals, apartments and private dwellings, churches, and schools
- Cite as
- Lockwood-Greene Records, 1883-2004 (bulk 1915-1930), Archives Center, National Museum of American History
- Date
- 1883
- 2004
- 1883-2004
- bulk 1915-1930
- 1890-1900
- 20th century
- 21st century
- creator
- Lockwood-Greene Company
- designer
- Lockwood, Amos
- Greene, Stephen
- creator
- Whitman, David
- collector
- History of Technology, Division of, NMAH, SI
- Mechanical and Civil Engineering, Division of [former name], NMAH, SI
- Subject
- Greene, Stephen
- Local number
- 1997.0021 (NMAH Acc.)
- 2008.3059 (NMAH Acc.)
- Data Source
- Archives Center - NMAH
- No Image Available
[Trade catalogs from Ramp Buildings Co.]
- Date
- 1900s
- Company Name
- Ramp Buildings Co.
- Record ID
- SILNMAHTL_8849
- Data source
- Smithsonian Institution Libraries
