A potentially Titanic life cut short

A lot is being said today about the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic and the unfortunate deaths of over 1500 people in the icy waters of the Atlantic. I'll be thinking about one of a handful of New Jersey notables to perish on the ship, Trenton native Washington A. Roebling, II. The 31 year old son of Charles, the president of John A. Roebling's Sons Company, Washington was returning to the United States after touring Europe with business associates. He hadn't been discussing bridges or wire rope, though; he was all about automobiles.

Washington Roebling II memorial at the family plot
in Riverview Cemetery in Trenton. 

Young Washington had worked at the family business for a few years before taking an interest in the nascent car manufacturing industry. In the days before the Ford, Chrysler and General Motors became the Big Three, there were dozens of small automobile companies around the country, including a high end brand owned by William Walter, a family friend. Seeing an opportunity when Walter ran into financial trouble, Washington was among several partners who purchased the company, moved it from New York to an old brewery plant in Trenton and renamed it the Mercer Automobile Company.

Like his father and uncles, Washington was a talented engineer, a skill that came to great use in designing and building high-performance cars. He didn't just make them, though; he drove them, too, to some success. Competing behind the wheel of his custom-designed Roebling Planche racer, he took second place honors at the Vanderbilt Cup Race in 1910.

Washington chose to take the maiden voyage of the Titanic after touring Italy and France with his friend Stephen Weart Blackwell and chauffeur Frank Stanley. Rather than bringing a Mercer to Europe, Washington took a Fiat, which seems kind of like bringing pork roll to Trenton. A Night to Remember, the seminal chronicle of the experiences of upper class Titanic passengers, says little about Washington, other than relating his calm and helpful demeanor in helping women into lifeboats. Those whom he helped said he assured them they'd be all right and possibly even back on the ship by daybreak. If he'd heard about the severity of the damage to the ship, he was well aware that staying on board would lead to certain death, but he followed the gentlemen's code of the day and remained.

One can only wonder what Washington might have achieved with the Mercer Automobile Company had he lived to old age. The few Mercers still around are treasured as specimens of some of the finest auto engineering of the day. Perhaps Trenton would have become a mecca for high-performance racing, or the Mercer would be prized along with the Porsche and Lamborghini.

Incidentally, the Fiat didn't go down with the ship. Stanley had fallen ill in Europe and left a week later, taking the car with him.

Another Roebling on the Delaware. Whoda thunk?

I feel as if I keep running into Roebling bridges on the Delaware.

Last summer, it was the aqueduct that brought the Delaware and Hudson Canal across the river from Pennsylvania to New York.

The other day it was a cable suspension bridge connecting Riegelsville with Riegelsville. That's two separate towns, one in New Jersey and the other directly across in Pennsylvania, kinda like Kansas City, but not really. I found the bridge as I was wandering along the very narrow and curving River Road in Pohatcong, south from the hamlet of Carpentersville.

As I mentioned in my post about the Carpentersville excursion, I wasn't even sure the river to my right was the Delaware. It's not especially wide in Warren County, there were no signs to tell me, and I didn't have a GPS. The only indication I had was a line painted about 10 feet up on a house to indicate the high-water mark following Hurricane Diane in 1955. I knew the Delaware had severely overstepped its bounds in the 50s, but I wasn't sure that others in the area hadn't, as well.

The Riegelsville Roebling bridge owes its creation to an earlier flood: the 1903 "Pumpkin flood" that not only washed orange gourds down the river but also swept away a wooden span built in 1853. Like other bridges the company built, the 1904 structure has aged well, withstanding a host of floods with minimal damage. It's standing even prouder now, after a 2010 rehab, funded by the bridge's owner, the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission. Travelers pay no tolls there, though there are toll houses on both sides (take that, Dingmans Ferry bridge!).

When there's a bridge, I have to cross it, even if it lands me in another state for a few minutes. I was a little surprised by the challenge the roadway presented. The open grate deck kinda grabs your tires and shunts your car over a little bit, requiring you to steer straight more diligently than you might ordinarily. The Acura approaching from the opposite direction certainly appreciated when I tugged my car to the right a little more to assure I stayed well within my lane.  Overall, though, it's a pleasant though quick ride across the Delaware, just over 500 feet long. Once again, Roebling's work has stood the test of time.

Wandering the company town of Roebling

Back in the days before suburbanization, when a company built its manufacturing facilities in the countryside, it had to consider where the factory's workers would come from. There generally wasn't enough suitable labor locally, so the company would take on the role of developer and landlord and build a whole town for the workforce it would recruit from elsewhere. The typical company town would spring up just outside the factory gates: company-owned housing, stores, schools, fire and police protection, you name it.

The John A. Roebling's Sons company took this approach in 1905 when locating its new steel mill on the banks of the Delaware River south of Trenton. Today, the factory is gone, but many of the buildings and homes still stand in the tidy community of Roebling. Using a map provided by the Roebling Museum, I took a walking tour of a five-block by two-block section of this neat little enclave, which is now a part of Florence Township.

Row housing in Roebling.

During my visit to the museum, I'd learned that the living conditions and rules for the Roebling community had set it apart from many other company towns. First, the housing was constructed under the basic premise that workers and their families deserved decent and modern homes. A variety of brick structures was available depending on a worker's family situation: a 'bachelor hotel' for unmarried workers, row housing for couples and small families, duplexes and single-family houses that were mostly reserved for middle and upper management. Each was equipped with full plumbing, electricity and gas, which was unusual for the area at the time. The museum docent explained that the size of the home didn't necessarily equate with the employee's status in the company. One laborer, for example, had 13 children and was provided with a larger house to accommodate them.

At first, where you lived was also determined by your ethnicity. The company actively recruited recent immigrants from Central Europe, so you would see a Hungarian enclave, a block of Lithuanian families, and so on. That practice changed over time as youngsters of different backgrounds met, got married and had their own families while remaining in town, working at the factory as their fathers did.

The Roebling factory store in the center of town
is now a deli and convenience store.

The company store still stands as a small market and deli in the center of town, not far from the statue of Charles Roebling that was dedicated just a few years ago. Unlike the usual practice in similar towns, however, factory employees were paid in cash rather than company scrip, so they were able to buy their food and other staples anywhere they wished. Two things Roebling didn't have were churches and drinking establishments, but residents didn't have to go far to satisfy their thirst for salvation or distilled spirits: literally just across the railroad tracks at the edge of town, are seven houses of worship and 14 bars.

Today, community pride is clear from the tidy lawns and well-cared for exteriors of the homes and public buildings. When I visited on a sunny weekday afternoon, a few people were out and about, but mostly, it was very quiet, with little traffic on the streets. No doubt, most residents were at work or school, and the streets would get busier at late afternoon. It wasn't hard to imagine that 50 or 100 years ago, the residential area would have been enveloped by the not-so-distant noise of the Roebling factory in action. If you blocked out the modern cars from sight, you might even be able to envision workers streaming down the main road from the factory gate at quitting time, making the short commute to their homes.

I needed to make the reverse walk to get back to my car, which was parked inside the factory gates beyond the museum. On the way, I passed a small vestige of the days when the whole town was privately owned: an otherwise easily-overlooked obelisk that once held part of a chain that blocked the street from traffic one day a year. It's a little-known fact, but in most jurisdictions, if you allow the public to use part of your private property as a thoroughfare for 365 consecutive days, it reverts to the public domain. Thus, to retain property rights to the road system, Roebling would block off the town's streets for one day per year by stringing lengths of rope (made from Roebling wire, of course) between obelisks like the one in the picture to the right. Rockefeller Center management used to do the same thing with the drive between 30 Rockefeller Plaza and the ice rink, usually on Christmas or New Years, I think. Pretty wild, eh?

Check out more photos of Roebling and the museum on our Facebook page!

Exploring the industrial past: the Roebling Museum

I'll make it to Burlington someday. I swear.

Ever since our visit to the provincial capital of East Jersey, Perth Amboy, I've wanted to see its West Jersey counterpart, Burlington City. For one reason or another (Turnpike issues, birding imperatives elsewhere), we  just haven't made it, and I figured I'd take one of our recent beautiful weather days to make the drive while Ivan was occupied with a client.

Then I saw the brown sign for Roebling. You know what those brown signs mean: there's something interesting there. Follow that sign, leave Route 130 and cross the railroad tracks, and you land at the site of the former Roebling steel mill. It's an interesting vision: on one side, you see a fenced-in expanse of grass with what looks like two parallel monorail tracks high above ground, and some industrial equipment beneath. On the other side, you see construction trailers and a large expanse of disturbed earth. In the middle, there's a parking lot for the Roebling Museum, punctuated by an old green wooden building. The museum itself is at the top of an incline, as if to tower ever so slightly above the field below.

There's a good reason for that, I discovered. The museum building was originally the Roebling factory gatehouse, holding several different functions including a first aid station and a three-cell jail. I was welcomed  in by two very friendly docents who were more than happy to guide me through exhibits outlining the Roebling family, evolution of their company and the factory, and the adjoining town.

You might recall that earlier this year, Ivan and I visited one of John Roebling's early bridges, the Delaware Aqueduct spanning the Delaware River between New York and Pennsylvania. Town residents are justifiably proud of that span as well as the several more famous bridges containing Roebling wire: the George Washington, Manhattan, Verrazano Narrows and Golden Gate, among others. My guide pointed out that as an engineer, John Roebling designed and built a then-unique bridge over the Niagara River which conveyed trains on a top deck and horses and carriages on an underdeck. Had it not been rendered obsolete by changes in railroad technology, it might still be in use today.

Bridges, however, were only one use of Roebling products. Both the Wright Brothers airplane and the Spirit of St. Louis contained Roebling wire. Otis elevators were suspended by Roebling steel cables specifically designed to handle the unique stresses of pulleys and loads of varying weights. Remember the Slinky? Yup -- made from Roebling wire. Essentially, if you needed extruded steel, Roebling could and often did supply it, in gauges down to the width of a human hair.

I'm getting ahead of myself, though. To supply the wire rope for the bridges, the Roebling family established a steel mill-factory complex in Trenton, based on the recommendation of a friend who lived nearby. Soon, however, they'd expanded beyond the capacity of the property and needed another location. The village of Kinkora, about ten miles south of Trenton, was just the place -- close to the Pennsylvania Railroad and the along the shores of the Delaware River. The company bought three farms there in 1905 and got to work.

Along with a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility, the Roeblings built a company town to house the substantial workforce needed to operate the factory. I'll get into that in our next installment, but I'll say that the museum exhibit gives a great view into who worked at the plant and life in the village during the factory's heyday. You can also pick up a self-guided walking tour if you'd like to get a closer view of present-day Roebling.

The family sold the mill to Colorado Fuel and Iron in 1952, and it stayed in operation until 1974. Now only a few small buildings are still standing. Declared a Superfund site in 1983, most of the area has been remediated, though the Army Corps of Engineers is still on site, explaining the construction trailers I saw.

In all, the Roebling Museum tells an interesting story of American industrialism and its impact on both society and the people who worked there. I was particularly impressed by how well the information is presented, both in the exhibits and by the docent. They also host a series of special events; the next will be a lecture and tour of the town on October 15.

Oh, and when you go, be sure to check out the massive flagpole next to the guardhouse. You can't miss it: it's the third highest flagpole east of the Mississippi.

The Roebling aqueduct - finding New Jersey on the Upper Delaware River

Sometimes Hidden New Jersey spots jump out at us serendipitously, a phenomenon which seems to happen more often out of state. That was the case on an unplanned recent visit to the Upper Delaware River in New York State.

First, though, a little background, starting when I was writing the blog entry on Trenton's Riverview Cemetery. In researching the Roebling family members whose graves we visited, I discovered that one of John Roebling's early spans was an aqueduct crossing the Delaware between New York and Pennsylvania. I didn't read much about it, but the photo looked cool, and I told Ivan we should visit. Not surprisingly (because we'd already grown accustomed to such coincidences), he'd already come upon it in his travels. In fact, he'd discovered it after having his own bit of serendipity: the nearby Minisink Ford hosted a battleground where a commissioned Mohawk named Joseph Brant had led British troops against local colonists in 1779. Ivan had seen the name at another distant stop on his trip, no doubt remembering the name because it's, well, a species of goose. Making stops in two obscure places and seeing the same name? What are the chances?

I'd totally forgotten about the bridge when we got to the area, and thought it would be fun to check out the battlefield, which we did. Taking another road from the site than the one we used to get there, we found ourselves squarely across from the Roebling bridge. This was too good to be true! We had to stop.

What's now a one-lane river crossing was once an active aqueduct for the Delaware and Hudson Canal. Current day pedestrian walkways were once tow paths for the mules who pulled barges along the waterway, making for an interesting stroll across the broad river.

It's kind of funny to think of there being a water bridge across a body of water, but when you look at the history, it makes sense. The canal had to cross the New York/Pennsylvania border, and originally the barges would traverse the river to get to the dug canal on the other side. Problem was, loggers upstream would use the river to transport wood downstream, making collisions almost inevitable. Someone had to yield, and it ended up being the canal traffic.

Enter John Roebling, engineer and wire cable manufacturer. From 1847 to 1851, long before becoming famous for building the Brooklyn Bridge, he built four suspension aqueducts along the canal. The one we visited was the last remaining, and also the oldest wire cable bridge in the United States. He did good work, too. According to the NPS website, nearly all of the bridge's ironwork, from cables to suspenders, are the same materials installed upon the structure's construction. The cables - spun on site under Roebling's direction - were tested in 1983 and found to be still viable. Now, that's craftsmanship!

For a time after the D&H was abandoned, the bridge operated as a private toll road, serving in that capacity until 1979. After many years of disrepair, the National Park Service bought and restored the aqueduct and toll house in 1986. Visitors can enjoy a few interpretive exhibits in the New York-side house, and even drive across the bridge's active roadway.

We decided it would be more fun to stroll the towpath from New York to Pennsy and back again, taking the chance to do a spot of birding. While it was an overcast day, the scenery was beautiful, and we even saw a young bald eagle in the distant sky.

Having found New Jersey striding across the far reaches of the Delaware, I can't help but realize that the water that flowed under the bridge deck beneath our feet eventually glided past Roebling's grave in Riverside Cemetery in Trenton. Hopefully he's resting well, knowing that his works continue to serve the traveling public, over 150 years later.