Charles was born on October 6, 1852 in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. He was of German stock, the son of Karl and Ida L. (Merker) Strobel. He had two older sisters, one older brother, and one younger brother; the last, musical in taste and ability, was especially close to him.
Strobel obtained his early education in the public schools of his home city and, inasmuch as education in engineering was then in its infancy in the United States, entered the Royal Institute of Technology in Stuttgart, Germany, from which he graduated in 1873 with the degree of civil engineer.
Steel-framed structures, particularly bridges and buildings, became his major interest. Until about 1840 little basic theory or practice had been established in this field, but in the following half-century giant strides were made.
Young Strobel returned to the United States and plunged into the midst of this development, to which he was to devote his life. His first employment (1874 - 78) was with the Cincinnati Southern Railway Company as assistant to the chief engineer.
As such he was responsible for designing and building bridges and viaducts, in particular the Ohio River Bridge at Cincinnati, notable for having one span of 519 feet, and the Kentucky River (cantilever) High Bridge. Here he probably inaugurated, in American railroad practice, the system of bridge design based on an analysis of wheel-loads for locomotives and cars that was later refined and popularized by Theodore Cooper.
Subsequently Strobel had a hand in building highway and railway bridges of steel over the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers. Especially noteworthy was the 525-foot, 900-ton truss of the Ohio Connecting Railway, below Pittsburgh, which was built on barge and timber supports 143 feet in height and floated into place.
His later connections were with the Keystone Bridge Company of Pittsburgh, as engineer and assistant to the president (1878 - 85) and, from 1885 to 1893, as consulting engineer and agent in Chicago. In Chicago he constructed the city's first rolling lift bridge and later other types of bascule bridges and, as consultant for the architectural firms of Burnham & Root and Adler & Sullivan, helped to devise the steel skeleton construction used in many early skyscrapers.
In his later years Strobel withdrew from the more professional side of engineering work in favor of his business interests, establishing in 1905 the Strobel Steel Construction Company, with which he was closely connected until his retirement in 1926.
This was later expanded to include steel and formed the basis of the later Pocket Companion or "Carnegie Handbook, " long a standard authority for all designers, manufacturers, fabricators, and users of steel.
Strobel died at his home in Chicago of heart failure.
During his years with the Keystone Bridge Company Charles Louis Strobel originated the Z-bar, which could be assembled into fabricated columns, and designed new I-beam sections, 8 to 30 inches deep, which were afterwards adapted by others to standard American production. Of perhaps equal usefulness was his engineering handbook, A Pocket Companion of Useful Information and Tables Appertaining to the Use of Wrought Iron for Engineers, Architects and Builders (1881). Long active in the American Society of Civil Engineers, he once declined the nomination for president because he felt that this office should go to one engaged in the professional rather than the business end of engineering. Shortly before his death, however, he accepted the Society's highest professional acknowledgment, election as honorary member.
Courageous, just, and self-disciplined, he was totally dependable. Strobel was a man of striking appearance and dignified bearing. Though he gave the outward impression of extreme reticence, his few intimates recognized his friendliness and spontaneity.
On December 2, 1890, he married Henrietta Baxter of Chicago, by whom he had a son, Charles Louis, and a daughter, Marion, who followed a literary career. Mrs. Strobel died in 1905, and on July 30, 1910, he married Mary Wilkins.
