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.
The article began, “As this is written, most ominous reports come from the Mississippi Valley.” This brief mention in the pages of ENR came as one of the greatest disasters in U.S. history was unfolding.
This 1930 cover image depicts a group of four barge-mounted derricks using 100-ft-long booms to carefully place an assembly of pipes in a trench at the bottom of the Harlem River, which separates the northern tip of Manhattan Island in New York City from Bronx County.
Charles Whiting Baker, chief editor of Engineering News, was vacationing in Vermont in August 1907 when word reached him that the Quebec Bridge, under construction near Quebec City across the border in Canada, had collapsed.
This 1926 cover shows a wooden stave pipe under construction in northern California. The 16-ft-dia, 1,318-ft-long conduit connected two concrete-lined tunnels at a hydroelectric plant on the Klamath River.
Engineering News in its early years was more of a civil engineering journal than its later incarnations (including Engineering News-Record), with numerous articles contributed by engineers.
