Flipside: Overlooked--Pop Pop's Work on Two Major Projects

Amy Johnson Crow has a 52 Ancestors Week blog challenge which I have decided to give a try for the second year.

The prompt for week # 3 (January 22-28) is Overlooked.

I have certainly failed to blog about this subject. I have done the research in bits and pieces and actually wrote the piece years ago--just never added it to Flipside. My issue was dissecting the real from the apocryphal.

Aunt Faith, Faith Carol Hughes Roolf, my primary informant for the paternal side of the family talked of how her father and my paternal grandfather, George Henry Hughes, worked on the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge and the Pittsburgh Civic Arena during his employment with the American Bridge Company. My father, George VanGilder Hughes, also spoke of his Dad's work on the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge.

Like so many of you, I have found apocryphal stories about family members. Going down the rabbit hole to find the truth is the challenge.

George Henry Hughes
Draftsman, American Bridge Company
Ambridge, Pennsylvania

George Henry Hughes--My Pop Pop

My paternal grandfather was employed as a draftsman at American Bridge his entire working life. He had a talent for drawing. His education was typical for his age, eighth grade. No college, no structural engineering education degree. He was born in England in 1898. His family immigrated in 1908 and came to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pop Pop's father, John George Hughes, was employed in the steel mills, first with Jones Laughlin on Pittsburgh's South Side and then relocating the family to the new company town, Woodlawn, Beaver County, Pennsylvania.

American Bridge Company 1915

Woodlawn Ambridge bridge

In 1913, fifteen year old Pop Pop began as a draftsman with American Bridge across the Ohio River from Woodlawn. He retired in 1961 after forty-eight years of service. How many folks today can say that they stayed with a job that many years.

I blogged about Pop Pop's employment with American Bridge back in 2009--the infancy of my blog. I did list the Golden Gate Bridge as one of the projects he may have worked on. Humm

Time to, hopefully, set this overlooked story straight.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Civic Arena

The easiest one to research. Aunt Faith's story about her father's part in this American Bridge construction was in the mid to late 1950's (my guess on the era). She described watching her father sitting at the dining room table at night and working with various sized blocks? deciding on whether or not there could be a retractable roof.

Scanned from the American Bridge Connections
Summer, 2012
page 18

American Bridge did construct the Civic Arena, although they were not the architect, general contractor or the structural engineer on the project. Ground was broken in 1958 and completed in 1961.

I am buying into this story of Aunt Faith's. American Bridge probably had the contract in hand to build the Civic Arena before she married or just afterward. She would have seen her father playing around with some sort of blocks to see if the circular structure would hold a roof and probably had some sort of thin blocks to try to put a roof on it. Although a draftsman, Pop Pop had seniority and American Bridge would have had their department making model superstructures of the building.

I should add here that on the 1950 Federal Census, Pop Pop is listed as a structural engineer. Also adding that I grew up in Pittsburgh and did go to the Civic Arena in the early 1960's. I did not know that my grandfather's company built it and that he played around building models of it in the late 1950's.

San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge

Both my Dad and my Aunt told family members that their Father worked on the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge. I have found no mention of it on the various American Bridge Company's websites.

In 2004, I jumped back on the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge research and found this on the Internet. This information on Frederick Ashley Pneuman, employed at American Bridge Company is listed as responsible for the cable engineering on the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge on his college website. No one can argue that the cables are VERY important ingredient to the design of the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge. 😉

The Ithaca Journal
December 10, 1942
page 3

His obituary also mentions that his inventions were used on the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge.

San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge

The obituary also mentions that he worked on the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge. This was one of the important structures done by the American Bridge Company in 1932.

I think my Dad and Aunt had their memory about their Dad's involvement with these two bridges a little confused. Pop Pop probably worked on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge at his draftsman table in Ambridge, Pennsylvania along with other engineers. Pop Pop would have been thirty-four years old and with American Bridge for nineteen years. In 1932 my Dad would have been eleven and Aunt Faith, a newborn. Neither would have had an actual memory of this event.

Frederick A. Pneuman, employed with American Bridge, probably worked on the cable design for The San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge on his own.

I am calling the story of George Henry Hughes and The San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge apocryphal.

And the bridge work done on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge with the assistance of George Henry Hughes, draftsman at American Bridge Company, as TRUE. It is very easy to understand the confusion. Both bridges were constructed during the same decade, in the same area and with similar names. The Golden Gate Bridge is the more famous and that is the bridge Dad and Aunt Faith attributed to their Father.

Years back, I remember when we attended a birthday celebration for Aunt Faith, she was handing out several pieces of Hughes memorabilia. I believe one was a small framed picture she attributed as coming from her mother's estate and was a picture of a bridge. It was given to my cousin Dave. I thought I took a photograph of it and that the picture was of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

Credit and further information about American Bridge and Ambridge: Paul Hertneky, American Bridge Builds a Town....and a Nation, March 18, 2011.

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