Iron & Steel Preservation 

March 2018
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Traveling across the country I've had the opportunity to tour industrial sites, steel mills, steel fabrication companies, blacksmith shops and on-site erection projects -- and to communicate with craftsmen. What's your favorite industrial tool, I often ask. There isn't much hesitation in their responses as they describe their favorite tool and how they learned to use it. Whether it's a hammer or pencil, the men and women who design, build, and erect metal structures recognize the excellence of craftsmanship. Chicago is a city of many historic buildings and bridges that highlight this excellence.
Chicago is a city my wife and I enjoy visiting, and on this trip we decided to leave the car at home and travel by Amtrak. My objective: to discover some of Chicago's rivet history.
Although our trip of exploring riveting was spent mostly indoors during a week of bitterly cold temperatures, Chicago is famous for its many historic riveted movable bridges that span Chicago River System. For an adventurous summer vacation, purchase Nathan Holth's "Chicago's Bridges" and learn about these remarkable riveted structures of engineering and craftsmen excellence.

Vern Mesler
Iron & Steel Preservation Coordinator
Lansing Community College

Amtrak stop along the cold winter route from East Lansing Michigan to Chicago.
An early morning sunrise over Chicago Harbor.

Our trip began on a cold December morning, a light snow settling on the sidewalk outside the East Lansing Amtrak train station, passengers standing around with an odd assortment of luggage. Fifteen minutes late, the big diesel engine finally arrives and idles as passengers walk slowly through the freshly fallen snow, their luggage dusted white. Passenger cars set high above the tracks show the undercarriage packed with black dirty snow. Passengers are slow in stepping up on a slippery battered yellow foot stool a porter has dropped at the door. Once the cold metal doors are closed, everyone settles in, and after multiple windy stops we arrive at Chicago's Union Station.

Bus scheduling virtuoso, Nan Jackson. No wait longer than five minutes, a great way to explore Chicago.
Bookstore detail: riveted connections with embossed mill mark indicating the steel was rolled at Jones & Laughlin Steel Mill.

Bronze sculpture The Hammerman at the Chicago Institute of Art by Constantin Meunier, 1884. Besides being at the Chicago Institute of Art, The Hammerman is also on display at the Detroit Institute of Art.

 

A distinctive feature of The Hammerman is the iron bar the hammerman is leaning on. At the DIA the iron bar is labeled as pliers. This is actually a forge welded eyebar used in 19th century applications such as farm implements, maritime rigging hardware and tension members in iron truss bridges.





Chicago Field Museum, a great family museum. It is a memorable experience for those young minds that begin to see the natural world and make connections with their own newly discovered world. A lot of stuffed birds and the most famous prehistoric bird, T-rex. An obligatory photo finishes our Field Museum adventures.

Macy's Walnut Room restaurant is well known to Chicagoans. Still on the menu is Mrs. Hering's 1890 original chicken pot pie. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Macy's on Chicago's State Street is a multi-floor department store where parents and grandparents of today's generation shopped. Few of these great department stores survived the mass flight to the suburbs where large single floor malls spread across pristine farmlands.

Museum of Science and Industry. Across its multi levels, this museum has exhibits designed to awe and awaken a dormant mind. Tornados rise from the floor, the earth's surface shifts and twists when one activates a button. Packed in this massive vaulted-ceiling building are many short narratives of the history and future of science and industrial technology.
But nowhere among the impressive exhibits in this science and industry museum is there any mention of the industrial processes that were used to fabricate the building itself. One exception, in the Brick-by-Brick exhibit, is a display of columns and beams set against a large photo-mural of riveted connections. However, the display structure is bolted, not riveted.

Shedd Aquarium's remarkable exhibits and presentations of the watery world of fish can be mesmerizing, surrounded by huge aquariums filled with varied assortment of fish species.
Opened in 1930, Shedd Aquarium is of riveted construction. Some of its massive riveted members can be seen in the spectacular Falling Water exhibit.

Chicago's "elevated" is a rapid transit system known as the "L" to generations of Chicagoans who grew up with the sights, sounds and feel of steel against steel overhead along the streets and curving amid Chicago's high rises. It is a network of riveted columns, with trusses fabricated when shop riveting was the main fabrication assembly process.

Along the "L," unseen but not hidden, are finely crafted cast iron columns. Under layers of paint are details that were originally sculpted in wood. On a pattern table in a foundry, craftsmen would saw, chisel and carve fine-grained wood into patterns for casting iron. View this casting process in a History Channel Video at the historic Knight Foundry in Sutter Creek, California:
Knight Foundry Water-Powered Foundry & Machine Shop

Opened in June 1974, the Willis Tower observation deck is a well-known Chicago tourist attraction. Step out on the extended see-through deck and view what an ironworker would have seen erecting steel on the 103rd floor of the tower.
To avoid the multitudes of tourists and long slow lines that wind through crowd control posts and barriers, schedule your Willis Tower visit on a crisp 15 degree New Year's Day around 9:00 am.




Bitter cold Chicago winds under a sharp blue January sky penetrate most tough winter coats and scarves, leaving one exhausted after walking a few blocks. A warm place to enjoy some of Chicago's legendary jazz and blues music is Buddy Guy's Legends Blues Club, a great place to visit. Buddy Guy's menu of Louisiana-style Cajun and soul food, along with jazzmen on stage with guitar and harmonica, warms the soul.
Chicago is a city with its own unique signature, its historic buildings blending with the contemporary. For those who appreciate architectural structures, paying attention to details sometimes overlooked or hidden (like riveted connections) may add another dimension to their discoveries.



Program Fund 
Please consider contributing to the Iron and Steel Preservation Program Fund. This fund was established to support projects, research, conferences and scholarships related to the repair, rehabilitation, and restoration of metals. The Lansing Community College Foundation is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation.
Donate Here
Past Iron & Steel Preservation Newsletters
September, 2017 ISP Newsletter
December 2017 ISP Newsletter

Thank you to our 2017 donors!
We appreciate the many contributions to the Iron and Steel Preservation Program Fund during the past year.
Sponsor


Want to become a sponsor?
Contact Vern Mesler for more information at meslerv@gmail.com
 

Lansing Community College
5708 Cornerstone Drive
PO Box 40010 , MC 4100W
Lansing, MI 48917
(517) 614-9868 |   meslerv@gmail.com