On a Saturday morning in the summer of 1966, Vinton Bacon, general superintendent of the Metropolitan Sanitary District of Chicago, pulled his car into a service station near his suburban home for gas and an oil check. The attendant found four sticks of dynamite wired to the car’s engine. Only a faulty connection prevented them from exploding.
As reported by ENR at the time, while the Depression deepened in the early 1930s, none of the initiatives taken by President Herbert Hoover or Congress did much to help, and some, such as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which led to higher prices, were counterproductive.
In this selection of construction history from the ENR archives, a look at the successful rush to build in the middle of World War II what at the time was the world's largest office building.
During his first year as ENR editor-in-chief, Arthur J. Fox decided to have the magazine each year recognize the individuals who have made significant contributions to the construction industry.