previous next



[350]

Bridge-manufacturing in Boston or vicinity previous to that time had not been successful, and the modest beginning of the Boston Bridge Works gave ample opportunity to study and, so far as possible, avoid the causes of previous failure. The growth of the business was not at first rapid, but it was steady until, in the early spring of 1881, it had outgrown the accommodations afforded by the buildings and grounds first occupied. After a most exhaustive examination of the facilities afforded by other regions sufficiently near Boston, it was decided that no other spot combined so many advantages as are united at the present location.

The Boston Bridge Works produce steel or iron railroad and highway bridges, with fixed or movable spans for drawbridges of every description or requirement,—steel-roof trusses and coverings, steel building-frames and complete steel buildings, locomotive turn-tables, and all kinds of structural frames required.

The works cover about one hundred and forty thousand square feet of ground, and are completely equipped with modern machinery for a bridge-building plant. Last year they turned out and shipped about eight thousand tons of finished material.

Among the notable bridges built by the Boston Bridge Works in this vicinity may be mentioned the Harvard Bridge, from Cambridge to Boston, and the Dover Street Bridge and Boylston Street Bridge, in Boston. These works also produced the majority of the largest railroad bridges in New England, and have furnished the steel framework of several large and notable buildings, among which may be named the new Worthington building on State Street, and the new Tremont building in Boston. The number of men usually employed by the Boston Bridge Works is not far from three hundred, but at times has reached over four hundred.

The foregoing will give a fair idea of the general output and character of this distinctively Cambridge enterprise, and it shows that it is quite possible to produce steel structural work on a fairly extensive scale in New England, despite the large advantage generally conceded to Pennsylvania in this class of business.


Broadway iron foundry Co.

The Broadway Iron Foundry Co. was established in 1864 by Henry M. Bird, under the firm name of Henry M. Bird & Co., and moved to its present location, Broadway and Pelham streets, Cambridgeport, in 1866. Mr. Bird died in 1890, and the business was continued by his estate to January 1, 1896, when it was incorporated under its present name. The capital of the company is twenty thousand dollars, and they do a general foundry business, leasing the land and buildings from the Bird estate. About forty men are employed.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
New England (United States) (2)
Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania, United States) (1)
Cambridgeport (Massachusetts, United States) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Henry M. Bird (3)
Broadway (1)
William W. Bird (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
January 1st, 1896 AD (1)
1890 AD (1)
1881 AD (1)
1866 AD (1)
1864 AD (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: