Othmar Hermann Ammann (March 26, 1879 – September 22, 1965) was a Swiss-American

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing ...

whose bridge designs include the

George Washington Bridge The George Washington Bridge is a double-decked suspension bridge spanning the Hudson River, connecting Fort Lee, New Jersey, with Manhattan in New York City. The bridge is named after George Washington, the first president of the United S ...

Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge ( ) is a suspension bridge connecting the New York City boroughs of Staten Island and Brooklyn. It spans the Narrows, a body of water linking the relatively enclosed New York Harbor with Lower New York Bay and t ...

, and

Bayonne Bridge Bayonne Bridge is an arch bridge spanning the Kill Van Kull and connecting Bayonne, New Jersey with Staten Island in New York City. It carries New York State Route 440 (NY 440) and New Jersey Route 440. It is the sixth-longes ...

. He also directed the planning and construction of the

Lincoln Tunnel The Lincoln Tunnel is an approximately tunnel under the Hudson River, connecting Weehawken, New Jersey, to the west with Midtown Manhattan in New York City to the east. It carries New Jersey Route 495 on the New Jersey side and unsigned Ne ...

Biography

Othmar Ammann was born near

Schaffhausen Schaffhausen (; gsw, Schafuuse; french: Schaffhouse; it, Sciaffusa; rm, Schaffusa; en, Shaffhouse) is a town with historic roots, a municipality in northern Switzerland, and the capital of the canton of the same name; it has an estimate ...

, Switzerland, in 1879. His father was a manufacturer and his mother was a hat maker. He received his engineering education at the Polytechnikum in

Zürich , neighboring_municipalities = Adliswil, Dübendorf, Fällanden, Kilchberg, Maur, Oberengstringen, Opfikon, Regensdorf, Rümlang, Schlieren, Stallikon, Uitikon, Urdorf, Wallisellen, Zollikon , twintowns = Kunming, San Francisco Z ...

, Switzerland. He studied with Swiss engineer Wilhelm Ritter. In 1904, he emigrated to the United States, spending much of his career working in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. He became a naturalized citizen in 1924. In 1905 he briefly returned to Switzerland to marry Lilly Selma Wehrli. Together they had three children Werner, George, and Margotbefore she died in 1933. He then married Klary Vogt Noetzli, herself recently widowed, in 1935 in California. Ammann wrote two reports about bridge collapses, the collapse of the Quebec Bridge and the collapse of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge (Galloping Gertie). It was the report that he wrote about the failure of the Quebec Bridge in 1907 that first earned him recognition in the field of bridge design engineering. Because of this report, he was able to obtain a position working for

Gustav Lindenthal Gustav Lindenthal (May 21, 1850 – July 31, 1935) was a civil engineer who designed the Queensboro and Hell Gate bridges in New York City, among other bridges. Lindenthal's work was greatly affected by his pursuit for perfection and his l ...

on the

Hell Gate Bridge The Hell Gate Bridge, originally the New York Connecting Railroad Bridge or the East River Arch Bridge, is a steel through arch railroad bridge in New York City. Originally built for four tracks, the bridge currently carries two tracks of Amtr ...

. By 1925, he had been appointed bridge engineer to the Port of New York Authority. His design for a bridge over the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between Ne ...

was accepted over one developed by his mentor, Lindenthal. (Lindenthal's "North River Bridge" designs show an enormous, 16+ lane bridge that would have accommodated pedestrians, freight trains, rapid transit, and automobile traffic. The bridge, which would have entered Manhattan at 57th Street, was rejected in favor of Ammann's designs primarily due to cost reasons.) Ultimately, this became the George Washington Bridge. Under Ammann's direction, it was completed six months ahead of schedule for less than the original $60 million budget. Ammann's designs for the George Washington Bridge, and, later, the Bayonne Bridge, caught the attention of master builder

Robert Moses Robert Moses (December 18, 1888 – July 29, 1981) was an American urban planner and public official who worked in the New York metropolitan area during the early to mid 20th century. Despite never being elected to any office, Moses is regarded ...

, who drafted Ammann into his service. The last four of Ammann's six New York City bridges — Triborough, Bronx-Whitestone, Throgs Neck, and Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge were all built for Moses' Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority. In 1946, Ammann and Charles Whitney founded the firm Ammann & Whitney. In 1964, Ammann opened the

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

, that had the world's longest suspended span of , and was the world's heaviest

suspension bridge A suspension bridge is a type of bridge in which the deck is hung below suspension cables on vertical suspenders. The first modern examples of this type of bridge were built in the early 1800s. Simple suspension bridges, which lack vertical ...

of its time. The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge is currently the eleventh-longest span in the world and longest in the

Western Hemisphere The Western Hemisphere is the half of the planet Earth that lies west of the prime meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and east of the antimeridian. The other half is called the Eastern Hemisphere. Politically, the te ...

. Ammann also assisted in the building of the

Golden Gate Bridge The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the strait connecting San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The structure links the U.S. city of San Francisco, California—the northern tip of the San Francisco Pen ...

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

, currently ranked twelfth.

Works

Ammann was known for being able to create bridges that were light and inexpensive, yet they were still simple and beautiful. He was able to do this by using the deflection theory. He believed that the weight per foot of the span and the cables would provide enough stiffness so that the bridge would not need any stiffening trusses. This made him popular during the depression era when being able to reduce the cost was crucial. Famous bridges by Ammann include the following: *

(opened October 24, 1931) *

(opened November 15, 1931) * Triborough Bridge (opened July 11, 1936) *

Bronx–Whitestone Bridge The Bronx–Whitestone Bridge (colloquially referred to as the Whitestone Bridge or simply the Whitestone) is a suspension bridge in New York City, carrying six lanes of Interstate 678 over the East River. The bridge connects Throggs Neck and ...

(opened April 29, 1939) * Delaware Memorial Bridge (with

HNTB HNTB Corporation is an American infrastructure design firm. Founded in 1914 in Kansas City, Missouri, HNTB began with the partnership made by Ernest Emmanuel Howard with the firm Waddell & Harrington, founded in 1907. Considered as one of the ...

, first span opened 1951) *

Walt Whitman Bridge The Walt Whitman Bridge is a single-level suspension bridge spanning the Delaware River from Philadelphia in the west to Gloucester City in Camden County, New Jersey in the east. The bridge is named after the poet Walt Whitman, who resided ...

(opened May 16, 1957) *

Throgs Neck Bridge The Throgs Neck Bridge is a suspension bridge in New York City, carrying six lanes of Interstate 295 (I-295) over the East River where it meets the Long Island Sound. The bridge connects the Throggs Neck section of the Bronx with the Bay Ter ...

(opened January 11, 1961) *

(opened November 21, 1964) The George Washington Bridge was originally designed to have its steel structure clad in dressed stone, omitted from the final design due to cost constraints stemming from the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

. Ammann's managerial skills saw the bridge completed ahead of schedule and under budget. The

arched An arch is a vertical curved structure that spans an elevated space and may or may not support the weight above it, or in case of a horizontal arch like an arch dam, the hydrostatic pressure against it. Arches may be synonymous with vault ...

Bayonne Bridge is the only Othmar design that is not a suspension bridge. The Bronx-Whitestone Bridge had to be reinforced after only one year of operation because of perceptible movement during high winds. Warren trusses were initially implemented to stiffen the bridge, spoiling its classic streamlined looks. They have been removed and the wind problem solved using triangular shaped lightweight fiberglass aerodynamic fairing along both sides that slices the wind as it passes over the bridge. In addition to his work on bridges, Ammann also directed the planning and construction of the

Legacy

Ammann was the recipient of several awards, including the Thomas Fitch Rowland Prize (1919), the Metropolitan Section Civil Engineer of the Year (1958), the Ernest E. Howard Award (1960) and the

National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social scienc ...

(1964). In 1962, a bronze bust of Ammann was unveiled in the lobby of the George Washington Bridge Bus Station. A residence hall called Ammann College was dedicated in his honor on February 18, 1968 on the campus of

Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system' ...

. To mark the hundredth anniversary of his birth, a memorial plaque for Ammann was placed near the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge on June 28, 1979.

References

External links

Ammann & Whitney
*
Othmar Ammann’s Glory: Genius, willpower and thousands of miles of steel wire went into the George Washington BridgeOthmar Ammann's Glory
A description of the design of the George Washington Bridge and Ammann's rivalry with Lindenthal
Othmar Ammann
Provides dates of death, election to the academy, and citation

*
Othmar Ammann: Facts and Quotes from ASCE
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ammann, Othmar 1879 births 1965 deaths Bridge engineers ETH Zurich alumni Swiss emigrants to the United States Swiss civil engineers Structural engineers National Medal of Science laureates People from Feuerthalen

Biography

Works

Legacy

See also

References

Further reading

External links