CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · History & Society

Waddell & Harrington

American engineering company

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 17, 2025
Entity authorityQ7958964 ↗
Source-derived summary

Waddell & Harrington was an American engineering company that designed bridges from 1907 to 1915. It was formed in 1907 as a partnership of John Alexander Low Waddell (1854–1938) and John Lyle Harrington (1868–1942) and was based in Kansas City, Missouri, but had offices in Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, British Columbia. The company designed more than 30 vertical-lift bridges for highways and railroads.

The firm also designed one or more non-lift bridges, including the Colorado Street Bridge of Pasadena, California.

A number of its works are listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places (NRHP).

Notable projects

Bridges designed by the firm include the following, among others:

Hawthorne Bridge, spanning the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, NRHP-listed

Interstate Bridge, spanning the Columbia River between Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington; NRHP-listed (as the Portland–Vancouver Highway Bridge)

Steel Bridge, spanning the Willamette River in Portland

Iowa Central Railway Bridge over the Mississippi River at Keithsburg, Illinois, built in 1909, since demolished

Caddo Lake Bridge, LA 538, over the Caddo Lake Mooringsport, LA, NRHP-listed

City Waterway Bridge, 20th Ave., Spans Ravenna Park Ravine Tacoma, WA, NRHP-listed

Colorado Street Bridge, Colorado Blvd. Pasadena, CA, NRHP-listed

North 21st Street Bridge, spans Buckley Gulch, N. Fife and Oakes Tacoma, WA, NRHP-listed

North 23rd Street Bridge, spans Buckley Gulch, N. Fife and Oakes Tacoma, WA, NRHP-listed

Union Street Railroad Bridge and Trestle, Jct of Union St. NE and Water St.

Editorial summary

“Waddell & Harrington” enters the record as american engineering company. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Waddell, Harrington and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA strong contextual entry point for chronology, institutions and public events when official records are distinguished from later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1907, 1915, 1854, 1938—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Waddell, Harrington and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Waddell & Harrington” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Waddell, Harrington and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7958964. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1907, 1915, 1854 and 1938.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Waddell & Harrington”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Waddell & Harrington primary sources, Waddell & Harrington archive and Waddell research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Waddell & Harrington”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Waddell & Harrington” 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.