J. Rich Steers, Inc. was a prominent New York-based contracting company focusing on waterfront work. It specialized in heavy maritime infrastructure projects such as bridge and pier construction, tunnel, foundation and sewer and drain work. The firm and its related businesses maintained offices at 17 Battery Place in lower

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

, until ceasing operations in 1986.

Family and background

Of English descent, the Steers family had been involved in various maritime pursuits for over 200 years in England and the US, a long lineage that included involvement in the Plymouth Royal Dockyards. The family came to the United States in 1817, when naval architect

Henry Steers Henry Steers (1779 in Dartmouth, England – 1850 in New York, USA) was a prominent nineteenth-century American shipbuilder of English descent, and the ancestor of a line of important businessmen in various boatbuilding and maritime construction ...

relocated to New York City with his sons

James Rich Steers James Rich Steers (October 15, 1808 – April 16, 1896) was an American yacht builder and politician. He founded the George Steers and Co shipyard with his brother, George Steers. Career Steers was born in Plymouth, England. His father, Henry S ...

(1808-1896) and

George Steers George Steers (August 15, 1819 – September 25, 1856) was a designer of yachts best known for the famous racing yacht ''America''. He founded a shipyard with his brother, George Steers and Co, and died in an accident just as he was landing a maj ...

. James would go on to co-found the boatbuilding concern

George Steers and Co George Steers & Co was a 19th century shipyard company at Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Greenpoint, Long Island, New York. Company history Hathorne & Steers In 1843, George Steers went into partnership with William Hathorne, under the name of Hathorne & ...

with George, who is perhaps best known as the designer of the yacht

America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, winner of the first

America's Cup The America's Cup, informally known as the Auld Mug, is a trophy awarded in the sport of sailing. It is the oldest international competition still operating in any sport. America's Cup match races are held between two sailing yachts: one f ...

race. James Sr. was succeeded in the business by his own son

, born in 1832. A number of American Steers family members, including company founder and owner James Rich Steers Jr. (d. 1936), his brother, also named Henry Steers (1865-1928), and Henry Coster Steers (d. 1947), among others were graduates of Saint Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire.

Origins

First incorporated in 1904 as Henry Steers, Inc., the company changed its name to J. Rich Steers, Inc. in 1929, with the owner being James Rich Steers, Jr. At its height the company employed over 350 staff, drawing heavily upon construction industry personnel with backgrounds in the military, railroad and utility company construction fields. Later the family's concerns would also expand to include related company Steers Sand and Gravel, which maintained a plant in Northport, NY from 1923 onward, and the Steers Towing Company, founded in 1934.

Projects

The Steers firm often obtained contracts in partnership or joint venture with other construction companies, and the bulk of the company's work was focused on the New York City waterfront and environs. This included the construction of major portions of Manhattan's

East River Drive The Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive, commonly called the FDR Drive for short, is a limited-access parkway on the east side of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It starts near South and Broad Streets, just north of the Battery Park ...

. Work in the city's outer boroughs included the building of the Hunts Point Sewage Treatment Plant in the Bronx for the NYC Department of Public Works, as well as the creation of flood-prevention measures at

La Guardia Airport LaGuardia Airport is a civil airport in East Elmhurst, Queens, New York City. Covering , the facility was established in 1929 and began operating as a public airport in 1939. It is named after former New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia. ...

on behalf of the

Port Authority In Canada and the United States, a port authority (less commonly a port district) is a governmental or quasi-governmental public authority for a special-purpose district usually formed by a legislative body (or bodies) to operate ports and other t ...

. In 1939 the firm participated in the construction of the Cross Bay Blvd. Bridge connecting Queens to the Rockaways for the

New York City Department of Parks The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, also called the Parks Department or NYC Parks, is the department of the government of New York City responsible for maintaining the city's parks system, preserving and maintaining the ecolog ...

, designed by Madigan-Hyland. Steers' work in

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

included building the foundations of the now-defunct

CRRNJ Newark Bay Bridge The Newark Bay Bridge of the Central Railroad of New Jersey (CNJ) was a railroad bridge in New Jersey that connected Elizabethport and Bayonne at the southern end of Newark Bay. Its third and final incarnation was a four-track vertical-lift ...

, constructed for the

Central Railroad of New Jersey The Central Railroad of New Jersey, also known as the Jersey Central or Jersey Central Lines , was a Class I railroad with origins in the 1830s. It was absorbed into Conrail in April 1976 along with several other prominent bankrupt railroads of ...

The firm also did significant work for

PSE&G The Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) is a publicly traded diversified energy company headquartered in Newark, New Jersey and was established in 1985 with a legacy dating back to 1903. The company's largest subsidiary is Public Service Elect ...

, including the building of foundations for the ubiquitous bulk oil storage tanks which are a hallmark of the industrial northern New Jersey landscape. Other work in New Jersey included the accelerated rebuilding of a wooden railway trestle that had burned down in Matawan, NJ in 1946, in which over 150 laborers worked around the clock to quickly replace this vital commuter link. The firm also executed work outside of the New York metropolitan area, including the foundations of the

Chesapeake Bay Bridge The Chesapeake Bay Bridge (also known locally as the Bay Bridge) is a major twin bridges, dual-span bridge in the U.S. state of Maryland. Spanning the Chesapeake Bay, it connects the state's rural Eastern Shore of Maryland, Eastern Shore regio ...

and

Texas Tower 4 Texas Tower 4 (ADC ID: TT-4) was a United States Air Force Texas Tower General Surveillance Radar station, located south-southeast off the coast of Long Island, New York in of water. Hurricane Donna struck the tower in September 1960, seriou ...

for the US military.

First World War

The firm, then known under the Henry Steers name, gained attention during World War I when a high-profile labor dispute erupted concerning claims by the

AFL AFL may refer to: Sports * American Football League (AFL), a name shared by several separate and unrelated professional American football leagues: ** American Football League (1926) (a.k.a. "AFL I"), first rival of the National Football Leagu ...

and unionized carpenters that Steers had employed ironworkers to do work that was rightfully theirs as part of the construction of barracks in

Pelham Bay Pelham Bay Park is a municipal park located in the northeast corner of the New York City borough of the Bronx. It is, at , the largest public park in New York City. The park is more than three times the size of Manhattan's Central Park. The par ...

. Steers eventually agreed to employ carpenters for the project, ending their protest work stoppage on Army

cantonment A cantonment (, , or ) is a military quarters. In Bangladesh, India and other parts of South Asia, a ''cantonment'' refers to a permanent military station (a term from the British India, colonial-era). In military of the United States, United Stat ...

construction work and averting a threatened strike by over 50,000 union members.

Second World War

The company obtained contracts as part of the war effort to build invasion craft, beginning a long relationship with the US Navy. In partnership with Walsh Construction, they assembled

LCMs LCMS may refer to: Science and technology * Liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry, a chemical analysis technique * Learning content management system * LittleCMS, an open-source color management system Organizations * Lindero Canyon Middle S ...

and built LCTs in a facility in

Jersey City Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark.Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

development. In partnership with Grove, Shephard, Wilson & Kruge, Steers rebuilt harbors in

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...

and reconstructed the

Corinth Canal The Corinth Canal ( el, Διώρυγα της Κορίνθου, translit=Dhioryga tis Korinthou) is an artificial canal in Greece, that connects the Gulf of Corinth in the Ionian Sea with the Saronic Gulf in the Aegean Sea. It cuts through the ...

on behalf of the US Navy, and constructed a radio station for the

Voice of America Voice of America (VOA or VoA) is the state-owned news network and international radio broadcaster of the United States of America. It is the largest and oldest U.S.-funded international broadcaster. VOA produces digital, TV, and radio content ...

Tangier Tangier ( ; ; ar, طنجة, Ṭanja) is a city in northwestern Morocco. It is on the Moroccan coast at the western entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar, where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Spartel. The town is the cap ...

, Morocco. The business made headlines again in 1962 when Steers Sand and Gravel Company tugboat MV Gwendoline Steers sank with all hands lost during a severe and sudden winter storm in

Long Island Sound Long Island Sound is a marine sound and tidal estuary of the Atlantic Ocean. It lies predominantly between the U.S. state of Connecticut to the north and Long Island in New York to the south. From west to east, the sound stretches from the Eas ...

. In 1963, the firm reported $26 million in contracts Locally, the firm constructed the dock, bulkhead and dike serving the Sewaren Generating Station on the

Arthur Kill The Arthur Kill (sometimes referred to as the Staten Island Sound) is a tidal strait between Staten Island (also known as Richmond County), New York and Union and Middlesex counties, New Jersey. It is a major navigational channel of the Port of ...

in 1948, the Queens side anchorage of the Throgs Neck Bridge in 1961, and the Commodore Barry Bridge over the Delaware River in 1974.

Equipment

In order to execute the large and complex maritime projects which were its stock in trade, Steers possessed a sizable stock of heavy equipment and vehicles. In addition to numerous cranes, floating derricks and pile drivers, this included over 50 deck scows and a fleet of 10 tugboats led by the company's "flagship" vessel, the ''J. Rich Steers''. At the time of the company's closure, most of the corporate equipment went to

Weeks Marine Weeks Marine is a marine construction and dredging contractor based in Cranford, NJ. It was founded by Francis Weeks and his son Richard B. Weeks in 1919 as the Weeks Stevedoring Company. Company Weeks has three key divisions—Construction, D ...

in Cranford, New Jersey.{{cite web , url=http://structurae.net/companies/j-rich-steers , title=J. Rich Steers - Chronology , publisher=Structurae Version 6.5 - © 1998-2014 Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn Verlag , accessdate=August 26, 2014

Legacy

The firm's legacy lives on in the form of the J. Rich Steers Award, awarded for academic performance that shows potential for further engineering study and practice. This is bestowed annually by the New York City Post, Society of American Military Engineers.

References

Defunct construction and civil engineering companies Defunct engineering companies of the United States Companies based in New York City Construction and civil engineering companies established in 1929 American companies established in 1929 American companies disestablished in 1986 Construction and civil engineering companies disestablished in the 20th century Construction and civil engineering companies of the United States