Baldwin, Loammi, 1780-1838

Loammi Baldwin, 1780-1838, class of 1800, Harvard College, was a lawyer and later a civil engineer whose projects included canal construction and harbor improvement, railroads, water power projects, and city water supplies. He was in charge of the design and construction of dry docks at the Charlestown, Massachusetts, and Norfolk, Virginia, Navy Yards. His father (Loammi Baldwin, 1745-1807) was one of New England's first civil engineers, and his brothers, James Fowle Baldwin and George Rumford Baldwin, were railway and hydraulic engineers. The Baldwin family origins were in Woburn, Massachusetts. Loammi was an advocate of engineering education and took students into his office in Charlestown, where they had the use of his family's large library of engineering books, now part of the collection of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries.

From the guide to the Loammi Baldwin papers, Bulk, 1827-1833, 1824-1916, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute Archives and Special Collections)

Loammi Baldwin was a civil engineer and constructed Fort Strong in Boston Harbor (1814), as well as the Union Canal in Pennsylvania (1821).

From the description of Diary, September 9-29; November 1823. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 173465698

From the guide to the Loammi Baldwin diary, 9 September 1823 - 29 November 1823, 1823, (American Philosophical Society)

Civil engineer, lawyer, and author. Native of Massachusetts.

From the description of Letters, 1821-1838. (University of Chicago Library). WorldCat record id: 52247478

Loammi Baldwin received his education at Westford Academy and Harvard College, where he took his degree in 1800. His earliest technical interest was mechanics. While Baldwin wanted to enter a career in instrument-making, his frustration at the duration of a costly seven-year apprenticeship convinced him to study law instead. He moved to Groton, where he entered the preceptorship of Timothy Bigelow. In Groton, Baldwin designed and built the town's first fire-engine at the age of 22. The machine remained in the town's use for over eighty years.

Baldwin passed the bar exam in 1804, but abandoned law for civil engineering in 1807. To prepare to become a civil engineer, Baldwin traveled to Europe to study public works there and in England. On his return, he opened an office in Charlestown, Massachusetts, where he sold his expertise as an engineer of buildings and other civic work projects. In 1819, he took up employment by the City of Boston as an engineer of improvements. He concurrently assisted with public works projects in Virginia.

In 1821, Baldwin became engineer of the Union Canal, one of the largest engineering projects of the era. The project entailed extending the canal seventy-nine miles from Reading to Middletown, PA, and included building a 739-foot tunnel, three large dams, and an 800-acre artificial lake. One of the dams was to be the largest and strongest dams yet built in the United States. Despite the high caliber of his work, Baldwin resigned over a controversy surrounding the proposed width of the canal. After the work was completed, Baldwin's original proportions were found to be correct, and costly repairs had to be effected.

Baldwin continued to travel between the United States and Europe to study advances in civil engineering. In 1825, after a year in France studying public works, Baldwin joined the effort to erect the Bunker Hill Monument. He accepted the responsibility of determining the proportions of the shaft. Baldwin performed a demonstration before his fellow committee-members by taking them to the Roxbury Mill Dam, from where Bunker Hill was visible, and exhibiting the effects of various heights by affixing small models to the railing of the sidewalk so that, from the right distance, each would appear to rest on the hill. The committee estimated proportions based on that model.

Later in 1825, Baldwin was appointed by the Massachusetts State Legislature to survey the route for a proposed canal from Boston Harbor to the Hudson River and the Erie Canal. During the next seven years he designed and built, simultaneously, large masonry dry docks at the Charlestown, MA and Norfolk, VA navy-yards, both completed in 1833. These were works of great magnitude at the time because of the lack of power-driven machinery and the primitive character of many of the tools used. Pile-drivers were operated by treadmills, which many 'reputable workmen' felt was a violation of the American spirit. While on these works Baldwin made surveys for a third naval dry dock in New York Harbor, which was not built until after his death. He also designed and built buildings for Harvard College, a canal around the Ohio River falls, a stone bridge called the Warren Bridge at Charlestown, and the Harrisburg Canal in Pennsylvania.

In 1834 he published his Report on the Subject of Introducing Pure Water into the City of Boston, which listed all neighboring ponds and located all wells into the city as possible sources of supply. Two years later he published the elaborate Report on the Brunswick Canal and Railroad, Glynn County, GA, giving details of a proposed inland navigation system, including 900 miles on the Ocmulgee and Oconee Rivers. Another project for which he furnished complete plans was a 'marine railroad' from Pensacola, FL. He was a member of the Massachusetts state Executive Committee under Governor John Davis in 1835 and a presidential elector in 1836. About a year before he died he had a stroke of paralysis; a second one proved fatal. He died in 1838 at the age of 58 and was buried in Woburn, MA.

From the guide to the Baldwin, Loammi. Papers, 1821-1842, (Special Collections Research Center University of Chicago Library 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 U.S.A.)