Othmar Ammann
Swiss-American structural engineer (1879-1965)
Othmar Hermann Ammann (March 26, 1879 – September 22, 1965) was a Swiss-American civil engineer whose bridge designs include the George Washington Bridge, Verrazzano–Narrows Bridge, and Bayonne Bridge. He also directed the planning and construction of the Lincoln Tunnel.
Biography
Othmar Ammann was born near Schaffhausen, Switzerland, in 1879. His father was a manufacturer and his mother was a hat maker. He received his engineering education at the Polytechnikum in Zürich, Switzerland. He studied with Swiss engineer Wilhelm Ritter. In 1904, he emigrated to the United States, spending much of his career working in New York City. He became a naturalized citizen in 1924.
In 1905 he briefly returned to Switzerland to marry Lilly Selma Wehrli. Together they had three children – Werner, George, and Margot – before she died in 1933.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q115783. VIAF identifies the subject as 62342169. The Library of Congress control number is n80160384. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1879, 1965, 1904 and 1924.
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This entry incorporates text from “Othmar Ammann” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.