Imagine a work of art combining two dissimilar works, both the creations of a great 19th century engineering dynasty. Master automotive designer and artist Ken Eberts will display this painting, The Mercer and the Bridge, at the Automotive Fine Arts Society Exhibit during this month?s Pebble Beach Concours d?Elegance.
The story of the Roebling family?s ties to the Brooklyn Bridge and the later Mercer Raceabout, both immortal in their respective worlds of design, has been told any number of times. For the sake of putting Ken?s painting into perspective, let?s repeat it. The German-born engineer and family patriarch John A. Roebling fled political persecution in Prussia in 1831, settling in western Pennsylvania. Roebling first made his name by weaving wire ropes to pull barges on the Allegheny Portage Railroad, an improvement on the breakage-prone hemp ropes. His subsequent cable designs allowed the construction of previously unfeasible suspension bridges, at Niagara Falls, Cincinnati and in Trenton, New Jersey.
Roebling never lived to see the Brooklyn Bridge completed. His toes were crushed by a ferryboat attempting to dock while he supervised work on the bridge?s south tower. Despite amputations, Roebling developed tetanus and died within weeks. Roebling?s son, Washington, a highly decorated Union officer in the Civil War, took over the project upon his father?s death, but nearly died of decompression sickness from long hours spent in pressurized underwater caissons. The bridge opened in 1883, and Washington Roebling established his company?s headquarters and steel mill in Trenton and nearby Florence, New Jersey. In Trenton, Washington?s younger brother, Ferdinand, agreed to back the Mercer automobile, built there in a former brewery owned by the locally prominent Kuser family.
The Pebble Beach Concours d?Elegance takes place August 19. For more information on the AFAS display at the concours, visit AutoArtGallery.com.
Source: http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2012/08/09/marvels-of-the-roebling-family/
kola boof burmese python national signing day ferris bueller god bless america earned income credit super bowl commercials
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.