This year is the 174th Anniversary of the John A. Roebling’s Sons company, once the largest employer in Trenton and a world leader in the construction of suspension bridges. To mark the occasion, The Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie will present an exhibition centered on the business that was owned by four generations of the Roebling family over 112 years.
The exhibition, which opens with a reception Friday, July 17, from 6 to 8 p.m., will be on view through December 6.
Clifford W. Zink, author of The Roebling Legacy, will speak and conduct a tour of the remaining buildings of the Roebling complex in Trenton at dates and times yet to be announced. For details, check the museum’s website, http://ellarslie.org.
John A, Roebling started making wire rope in 1841 in Saxonburg, Pennsylvania, and moved his factory to Trenton in 1848. His sons built the steel and wire mill and town of Roebling, in 1905. In 1953, the family sold the Trenton and Roebling plants to the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I). CF&I closed the Trenton plants in 1973 and the Roebling plant in 1974.
Mr. Roebling was the world’s foremost builder of suspension bridges in the 19th century and his bridges spanned major rivers when people said it couldn’t be done. His son Washington A. Roebling completed the most famous Roebling bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge, in 1883, and today it is an iconic national landmark.
The Roebling Company built suspension bridge cables for many bridges over the next 80+ years, from Canada to South America, including the George Washington Bridge connecting New York and New Jersey and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. It manufactured wire rope for many other uses — elevators, cable cars, tramways, airplanes, shipping, mining, construction, and ski lifts — and it made wire for electrical lines, telegraphs and telephones, wire cloth and screens, and pre-stressed concrete.
Curated by Richard Willinger, chair of the Museum Society’s Collections Management Committee, the exhibition includes five large paintings from the Roebling company’s exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair depicting the Brooklyn and George Washington Bridges and interior factory scenes. These paintings are part of the museum’s collection but are rarely exhibited. It will also feature a bronze plaque from the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair that commemorates the Skyride, an innovative and popular ride at the fair that the Roebling Company helped engineer and for which it supplied the wire ropes.
Also on display from the museum’s collection but rarely seen are three boards showing dozens of types of electrical wire made by the Roebling Company.
Artifacts in the display will include sections of wire rope, tools, artwork depicting Roebling bridges, and wooden forms used to make parts for the company’s machinery, as well as advertisements, photos, books, and company catalogs.
Items on display are being loaned to the exhibit by the Roebling Museum in Roebling and several individuals.
As the largest employer in Trenton for many decades, John A. Roebling’s Sons company had a major impact on the city and its workers and citizens. It had an international reputation for wire and wire rope making and bridge building, and its wire was used in hundreds if not thousands of industrial, commercial, and consumer products.
The Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie is located in the middle of Frederick Law Olmsted designed Cadwalader Park, entrance on Parkside Avenue, in Trenton, New Jersey. The museum is free and open to the public on Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and on Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. There is abundant free parking in front of the museum. For more information, visit www.ellarslie.org.
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