Joseph Harrison Jr. (September 20, 1810 – March 27, 1874) was an American mechanical engineer, financier, and art collector. He made a fortune building locomotives for Russia, and was decorated by Czar Nicholas I for completing the Saint Petersburg-Moscow Railway.Joseph Harrison, Jr. papers (PDF) from Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Harrison made important innovations to locomotives and steam boilers, but he may be best remembered for the art collection he amassed, that included "supreme icons of American art."
Early life and education
Harrison Jr. was born on September 20, 1810, the son of grocer Joseph Sr. and Mary Crawford Harrison. He grew up in the Kensington section of Philadelphia.Joseph Harrison, Jr. from National Gallery of Art. He had little formal schooling, and was apprenticed to a steam engine manufacturer at age 15.Coleman Sellers, "An Obituary Notice of Mr. Joseph Harrison, Jr." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 14, no. 94 (January - June, 1875), pp. 347-355.
Career Harrison worked as a journeyman in machinery firms in the late 1820s and early 1830s, and was hired as foreman of the Philadelphia locomotive firm Garrett & Eastwick in 1835. Early locomotives were propelled by a pair of driving wheels."Joseph Harrison, Jr., A Biographical Sketch," Cassier's Magazine, An Engineering Monthly, vol. 37 (November 1909 - April 1910). Attempts to double their tractive power by adding a second pair of driving wheels were unsuccessful, because of uneven distribution of the load between the axles. Harrison invented the driving rod, first demonstrated in the 1837 locomotive Hercules, which made twin pairs of driving wheels safe and effective.
Based on the value he brought to the firm, partners Phillip C. Garrett and Andrew M. Eastwick granted Harrison a one-third stake in Garrett & Eastwick in 1837. Upon Garrett's 1839 retirement, the firm was renamed Eastwick & Harrison. Eastwick & Harrison sold the patent for his driving rod to Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1843, and it became standard equipment in their locomotives.
Russia Harrison designed the 1839 locomotive Gowan and Marx for the Reading Railroad. Weighing about 11 tons, it was the most powerful locomotive built to date, demonstrated by its drawing 101 fully loaded coal cars the length of the Reading's road. This feat impressed Russian engineers who came to the United States in 1841 to research American locomotive manufacturers. Czar Nicholas had ordered the building of a railroad between Saint Petersburg and Moscow, and the engineers were selecting companies to recommend for the project. In 1843, Harrison, Eastwick, and their new partner Baltimore engineer Thomas Winans, traveled to Russia and were awarded a five-year $3,000,000 contract to build rolling stock for the railway.Nicholas B. Wainwright, "Joseph Harrison Jr., A Forgotten Art Collector," The Magazine Antiques, vol. 102, no. 4 (October 1972), pp. 660-668. The 162 locomotives and 2,500 freight cars were to be manufactured by Russian workers in Saint Petersburg. The railroad engineer who surveyed and laid the of track for the Saint Petersburg–Moscow Railway was Major George Washington Whistler, also an American. His son Jimmy, playmate of Harrison's eldest son, would become the painter James Whistler. Following Major Whistler's April 1849 death from cholera, Harrison's contract was extended, and he took over Whistler's projects.
"During the progress of this work, other orders, reaching to nearly two million dollars, were added to the original amount, including the completion of the great Cast Iron Bridge over the River Neva, at St. Petersburg, the largest and most costly structure of the kind in the world." At the November 12, 1850 opening ceremonies for the Neva railroad bridge, the Czar awarded Harrison a gold medal and other honors. Harrison and his wife and their growing family resided in Saint Petersburg from 1843 to 1850, then in Paris and London.
Return to Philadelphia
Harrison returned to Philadelphia in 1852 a wealthy man. He purchased half a city block, bounded by 17th, Locust, 18th, and Chancellor Streets with of frontage facing Rittenhouse Square.Atlas of the City of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: G. W. Bromley & Company, 1901), plate 2. Architect Samuel Sloan designed him a lavish mansion at 18th and Locust Streets, inspired by Pavlovsk Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Its principal floor featured a -wide drawingroom with three double windows overlooking the square.Samuel Sloan, City and Suburban Architecture (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1867), plate 24. Also part of the project were ten luxurious rowhouses faced with stone (rental properties), that lined the north side of Locust Street and shared the rear garden with the mansion. Some of these rowhouses were later occupied by Harrison's children and their families."Joseph Harrison, Jr. Estate Ready For Heirs," The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 4, 1931, p. 2. Construction began in 1855 and was completed in 1857.
Harrison also had Sloan design a Russian-styled dacha, or country house, in Northeast Philadelphia along the Delaware River, between Holmesburg and Torresdale.Patty McCarthy, "Harrison's Folly," March 30, 2015 lecture, Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center, Philadelphia. This was demolished in 1901 for construction of the Torresdale Water Treatment Plant.
Harrison invested his money in real estate, developing blocks of rowhouses in North Philadelphia, and building attractions such as Handel & Haydn Hall (1856), a concert and lecture hall at 531-547 North 8th Street."Harrison's Building," The Philadelphia Bulletin, November 19, 1856.
Harrison Steam Boiler
Harrison invented a new type of steam boiler, based upon the power of a hollow cast-iron sphere to withstand pressure.Joseph Harrison, Jr. "An Essay on the Steam Boiler," The Journal of the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, vol. 83, no. 3 (March 1867), pp. 161-177. Composed of 4-sphere units that could be replaced if any individual unit was damaged, his boilers were also readily expandable.
"Early in his engineering life, Mr. Harrison's attention was directed to the means of improving steam generation, more particularly with a view of making this powerful agent less dangerous, and less liable to explosion. Mr. Harrison's first patent for the Harrison Boiler is dated October 4th, 1859, though improvements on the original idea have been the subject of several patents in this country and in Europe. At the International Exhibition, held in London in 1862, the highest class medal was awarded to this boiler, for originality of design and general merit." Mr. Harrison's boiler is chiefly of cast iron, and is composed of many small and equal compartments. In other words, it is a combination of cast iron hollow spheres, each sphere eight inches in external diameter and three-eighths of an inch thick. This spherical form has peculiar geometrical and mechanical advantages; it is uniformly strained by internal pressure, and it is practically much stronger than a hollow cylinder of like diameter and thickness of shell. Hollow curved necks, three-and-a-quarter inches in internal diameter, make the communication between the spheres.Four of the spheres are cast together, constituting what is called a "unit." A number of units are bolted together into a rectangular slab, and any desired number of these slabs forms the boiler, which can be increased to any extent by merely adding to its width. The slabs are placed vertically side by side, and are elevated to an angle of forty degrees at the furnace end, so as to give complete drainage at the lowest point of the slabs, and a most perfect circulation of the water in each. The water occupies [the lower] two-thirds of the slabs, while the remainder of the upper part serves as the steam space. … The feed water enters the lowest sphere in each slab, and the steam is taken off at the highest point. … The several slabs communicate laterally with each other at both their highest and lowest points. … It requires over 1,500 pounds pressure to the square inch to burst these spheres, and then the rupture is harmless [to the rest of the units]."The Harrison Boiler," The American Exchange and Review, Philadelphia, vol. 10, no.1 (September 1866), pp. 62-66. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences awarded Harrison its 1871 Rumford Gold Medal for his safety improvements to steam boilers.
Personal Harrison married Sarah Poulter of New York City on December 15, 1836, and they had seven children: William, Henry and Annie, born in Philadelphia; Alice, Marie and Theodore, born in Saint Petersburg; and Clara, born in Philadelphia following their return from Russia.
In the midst of the Civil War, Harrison chaired the Fine Arts Committee for the Great Central Fair of the U.S. Sanitary Commission. The June 7 to 28, 1864 exposition was organized to raise money for medicine, bandages and supplies for Union hospitals. Most of Philadelphia's Logan Square was covered by a temporary building, and Philadelphians lent paintings and sculptures from their private collections. "The picture gallery is nearly 500 feet long and is now hung with more than 1,000 of the finest pictures in the country. … [It] has never been equalled in modern works anywhere not even in Europe. … The Fine Arts gallery is a separate exhibition at .25 cts admission. Our rects [receipts] have been since the opening nearly $1,500 per day."Harrison Letter Books, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, quoted in Wainwright, pp. 660-661. President Lincoln and his family attended on June 16. Over its three weeks, the fair raised more than $1,000,000.
Harrison served as one of the ten original members of the Fairmount Park Commission, and advocated for building an art museum atop Lemon Hill (the hill behind Boathouse Row). "If we as a nation are to keep pace with the civilization and refinement of the older states of the Christian world, we too, must have our free Art Galleries and Museums, owned by, enjoyed by, and cared for by the people." In the 1920s, the Philadelphia Museum of Art was built atop an adjacent hill, Fairmount. Harrison served as a Director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for fifteen years, and donated $10,000 toward construction of its 1876 building.
Following five years of a debilitating illness, Harrison died in Philadelphia, on March 27, 1874. He left an Estate valued at up to nine million dollars."The Will of a Philadelphia Millionaire," The Herald and Torch Light (Hagerstown, Maryland), April 8, 1874, p. 2. from Newspapers.com Many of the most important American works in his art collection came to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1878, and more came following Sarah Poulton Harrison's death, on July 21, 1906.
The bookplate Harrison used for his library may give a clue to his personal philosophy. It featured a crane with outstretched wings, and a Latin quote from Cicero about authenticity: "Esse quam videri" translates roughly as "Be, rather than seem."Bookplate of Joseph Harrison, Jr. from Pratt Institute Libraries via Flickr.
Benjamin Franklin Harrison's personal hero was Benjamin Franklin, another inventor and self-made man, and the art collector purchased multiple portraits of the Founding Father.