In building the St. Louis Bridge, James Eads faced hundreds of decisions. How would the spans be stiffened? What would the train tunnel look like? How big would the roadway be? Eads and his team wrestled with these choices for over 8 years, drawing detailed bridge construction documents to record and help implement their ideas. We're lucky that many of these drawings are preserved in the special collections of the library at Washington University in St. Louis.

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