Marshall Building Designated National Historic CE Landmark

摘要

A ceremony on September 27 officially conferred landmark status on Milwaukee's Marshall Building. ASCE's History and Heritage Committee had earlier approved the structure for recognition in the National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark Program. The ceremony was hosted by the Wisconsin Section. President-Elect Thomas L. Jackson recognized the building, at 207 East Buffalo Street, as the oldest existing example of flat-slab concrete construction in the world. The Marshall Building was designed by the civil engineer Claude A.P. Turner and constructed in 1906. Turner's flat-slab system differed from previous reinforced-concrete construction in that it consisted of only a slab and supporting columns, eliminating the time and expense of formed beams on the under-side of the floor. The system was the subject of intense debate and controversy when it was introduced, but within a few years it had been embraced by the civil engineering community. By 1913, in fact, more than a thousand such buildings had been constructed, and flat-slab design is very much in evidence in building construction today.