Fritz Engineering Laboratory
The largest and best equipped university structural laboratory in the United States upon its completion in 1910. The laboratory was donated to Lehigh University by John Fritz, Honorary Member of ASCE known as the father of the steel industry in the United States. The tests conducted at the laboratory over the years led to new, superior approaches to the design of a wide variety of civil engineering structures. For example, the gates for the locks of the Panama Canal, design procedures for reinforced concrete columns, plastic analysis and design procedures, and the fatigue strength of steel structures were among the many investigations conducted over the years at Fritz Lab.
John Fritz came to Bethlehem in 1860, hired by Robert Sayre, general manager of the new Bethlehem Iron Company, to design and build rolling mills and blast furnaces. Fritz and Sayre built the company into the largest manufacturer of steel armor plate and gun forgings in the world. The two also worked together on the Lehigh Board of Trustees from the university’s founding in 1865 until Fritz resigned in 1897. In 1907 Fritz joined the Board of Trustees to begin the development of what would prove to be his greatest gift to Lehigh. Each day in 1909, as the original section of Fritz Lab was under construction, Fritz was there to supervise the work on the testing facility he had designed, equipped and donated to Lehigh. Fritz Engineering Laboratory was patterned after the shop buildings that Fritz had erected at the Bethlehem Iron Company. This type of building would provide for proper space, good lighting, and logical arrangement of testing machines. Designed and built under FritzÃs personal supervision, the laboratory was of modern steel-framed construction. The laboratory was well suited for its intended purpose; it was divided into four work areas which were devoted to structural testing, cement testing, making and storing concrete test specimens, and hydraulic studies.
The initial laboratory equipment, personally chosen by Fritz, represented the state of the art in testing technology. There were twelve principal pieces of testing equipment, the most important of which was an 800,000-pound capacity Riehle universal testing machine. When installed, it was the largest vertical screw-driven universal testing machine in the United States. It was capable of testing tension members up to 20 feet and compression members up to 25 feet in length. The total cost of the laboratory exceeded $50,000, to which Fritz subsequently added another $150,000 to serve as an endowment for continuing maintenance of the facility. As a leading center for studies in structural engineering, the Fritz Engineering Laboratory played an important role in the development of Lehigh University, of structural engineering, and of constructed facilities in the United States. In 1955, these capabilities were enhanced by the construction of a modern addition which housed a 5,000,000-pound capacity Baldwin universal testing machine, one of the largest in the world. The new building was attached to the long side of the high bay of the original building, thus eliminating the right-side low bay of the original building shown in as it looked before 1955.
