Homer Hadley - SEAW Seattle President 1950, 1885-1967

Primary source: HistoryLink.org, Homer More Hadley

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio and raised in Toledo, Homer More Hadley worked as a surveyor in North Dakota before coming west as part of the US Coast & Geodetic Survey, and then on a surveyor crew for the Great Northern Railroad, Copper River Railroad in Alaska and for the Canadian Northern Railroad in Vancouver. He studied engineering intermittently at the University of Washington. During World War I, Homer gained experience in building concrete ships and barges in Philadelphia for the Emergency Fleet Corporation, as wartime steel shortages necessitated the use of alternative materials.

In 1920, as a young engineer working in the architectural office of the Seattle School District, Hadley suggested a floating bridge across Lake Washington, envisioning a floating roadway made up of a series of hollow concrete barges. Hadley formally proposed his idea at a meeting of the American Society of Civil Engineers on October 1, 1921. Hadley's proposal caused considerable public debate. He envisioned building the bridge as a toll bridge using private money, but bankers ridiculed the idea, calling it "Hadley's Folly."

In 1921, Homer took a job with the Portland Cement Association, promoting the increased use of cement for large-scale projects. After the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, he travelled to Japan to study the effects on different types of structures. In the mid-1930s, he designed one of the first paving machines in the United States. At the time, a prototype machine laid a strip of pavement on the highway to Orting.

The Lake Washington bridge project eventuated nearly two decades after he first proposed it: the controversial Mercer Island Bridge (originally the Lacey V. Murrow Bridge [shown here], also called Lake Washington Floating Bridge and I-90) opened July 2, 1940 as the world's first floating concrete bridge and the largest floating concrete structure of its time: "100,000 tons of steel and concrete rested on 25 floating sections, each fashioned like a honeycomb with watertight compartments. Sixty four anchors, each weighing 65 tons, secured it to the lake bottom." In 1993, a successful statewide effort resulted in the naming of the then-new Lake Washington floating bridge (also known as the Rosellini Bridge, the Evergreen Point Bridge, and 520), parallel to the original bridge, to honor Homer Hadley.In 1947 Homer retired from Portland Cement Association and opened his own office as a private engineering consultant, an enterprise in which his son Richard joined him soon thereafter. They designed several buildings in Juneau in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and all of them survived the Alaska earthquake of 1964.Moving into the work on steel bridges later in his career, Hadley designed the Parker Bridge in Yakima County, which he described as "the first concrete box-girder bridge in the United States." In 1962, the Iron and Steel Institute (later AISC) recognized its design as "The Most Beautiful Bridge" in its class of short-span bridges. The May 1966 issue of Civil Engineering featured his article "The Bridge Delta Girder: Single-Webbed and Double-Webbed."

Homer took part in the founding of SEAW, and served as SEAW Seattle's first President. Elmer Gunnette, Homer Hadley, and Cecil Arnold signed the Articles of Incorporation on April 20, 1950.

As a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Seattle Section Earthquake Committee, Hadley participated in reporting and making recommendations on the 1949 Pacific Northwest earthquake.

Homer M. Hadley worked until his death in July 1967. He died unexpectedly at his summer home at Soap Lake.

Posted May 2012

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