Former Pittsburgh company provided steel for Baltimore's Key Bridge, other landmark structures

It took seconds for Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge to collapse into Baltimore’s Patapsco River Early Tuesday after it was struck by a cargo ship.

But it took five years to construct the 1.6-mile-long bridge in the 1970s, and a major part of that process began in the Pittsburgh area.

The former Pittsburgh-Des Moines Steel Co., which had operations on Neville Island, fabricated steel for the massive span, which was one of the longest continuous-truss bridges ever constructed. The company also was a general contractor for the bridge project.

The Key Bridge was the second-longest continuous truss bridge in the world when it opened. At the time of its collapse, it ranked as the second-longest such bridge in the U.S. and third in the world, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

After the $60.3 million bridge opened on March 23, 1977, it was recognized the following year by the Chicago-based American Institute of Steel Construction as a top design among U.S. bridges of more than 400 feet in length. The central span alone was a little more than 1,200 feet long.

“This was a spectacular design and construction project for its day,” AISC President Charles Carter said of the Key Bridge. “This was the height of technology and capability at the time.

“The truss forms an arch and it continues over the supports for the adjacent spans. That means all of those (spans) work together, which increases the efficiency. You’re spreading the load over the entire bridge.”

Carter added, “It made for a very efficient and build-able design. In some ways, it made the bridge possible. It could have been done with an individual truss for each span, but that would have required a lot more material and labor, which would have been more expensive.”

Robust requirements

Constructed for the Maryland Transportation Authority, the four-lane bridge stood 185 feet above the water and was crossed by 30,000 vehicles every day, the Associated Press reported.

As noted on the website roadstothefuture.com, Engineering News-Record magazine reported in 1972 that Pittsburgh-Des Moines submitted a low bid of $30.7 million for the superstructure on all of the bridge’s spans, a figure that was 5% above the engineer’s estimate.

Kent Harries, professor in the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering, noted structural steel used in bridges — because of its direct exposure to weathering — typically must meet more robust requirements than that used inside buildings.

He said, “Steel structures, when properly maintained, should last, from a practical perspective, indefinitely.”

A construction crew was filling potholes on the bridge when it collapsed. Divers recovered the bodies of two of six workers who plunged into the water. The others were presumed dead.

The bridge was named for the author of the national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Historians believe the bridge wasn’t far from the spot in Baltimore’s harbor where Key, an attorney, was inspired to compose the song’s lyrics as he watched the failed British bombardment of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812.

Other projects

Pittsburgh-Des Moines was involved in other monumental projects, providing steel for the original World Trade Center and for the St. Louis Gateway Arch, which the company also erected.

As noted by the National Park Service, the steel arch rises 630 feet above the banks of the Mississippi River and its legs are spaced apart by a similar distance. It cost about $13 million to construct in the mid-1960s.

The outer skin of stainless steel, weighing nearly 900 tons, and the inner skin of carbon steel, tipping the scale at more than 2,000 tons, were fabricated in sections and bolted together at the Pittsburgh-area and Warren plants of Pittsburgh-Des Moines. Specially designed creeper cranes climbed up the partially completed legs of the arch to lift additional sections into position.

A tram ride takes visitors to the top of the arch.

A scaled-down Baby Arch monument in Starbrick, Warren County, commemorates the contribution of boilermakers at the former PDM plant in Warren, who helped to fabricate steel for the St. Louis landmark. The marker at the Pennsylvania site notes about 280 men worked at the Warren plant from 1962 to 1965, to cut, fabricate and weld steel pieces for the arch’s exoskeleton.

The marker states: “Each part had to be intricately measured, cut and ground to within 1/64th of an inch to make sure they would fit together perfectly with the other segments to form the Arch.” The steel was shipped by rail and truck 700 miles to St. Louis.

Years earlier, Pittsburgh-Des Moines was busy during the 1930s New Deal era, completing several lofty water towers to serve communities in Arkansas — including Cotton Plant, De Valls Bluff and Mineral Springs. All are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, according to livingnewdeal.org, a program of the Department of Geography at the University of California at Berkeley.

‘Good business’

John T. Jackson founded the steel company in Des Moines in 1892 and moved it to Neville Island in 1903.

“At that time, Pittsburgh was the leading steelmaker in the country, and if your company was located within 50 miles of the steel mills of Pittsburgh, you didn’t have to pay freight charges,” W. Richard Jackson, grandson of the company’s founder, told TribLive in 2003. “That’s when my grandfather decided that moving to Pittsburgh was good business.”

W. Richard Jackson was the third generation of the family to operate the company before it was sold. The company was purchased by Reliance Steel and Aluminum Co. in 2001.

The Los Angeles Times reported at the time that Pitt-Des Moines had seven distribution centers in California, Nevada, Utah, Washington and Iowa and had posted sales of $216 million in 2000.

Today, the PDM Steel subsidiary of Reliance offers steel products and processing and is headquartered in Elk Grove, Calif., with additional locations in California, Nevada, Colorado, Utah and Washington state, according to its website.