Goldmark was born on June 15, 1857, in New York City, the oldest of ten children. He was a brother of Josephine and Pauline Goldmark, leading social reformers, and a brother-in-law of Felix Adler and Louis D. Brandeis. His father, Joseph Goldmark, was an older half-brother of the Austrian composer Carl Goldmark. Born in Vienna, Joseph Goldmark took a leading part in the revolution of 1848, served for a time as a liberal member of the Austro-Hungarian Reichstag, and then, in the wake of political repression, fled in 1851 to New York City. There he married Regina Wehle, a well-educated woman whose family had emigrated in 1849 from Prague to Madison, Ind. , and later moved to New York. Although at first he practiced his profession of medicine, Joseph Goldmark soon perfected a method for producing fulminate of mercury, which he proceeded to manufacture, along with other explosives, in a factory in Brooklyn.
Education
Goldmark received his early education at the local Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute. In 1874 he entered Harvard, where, in addition to taking courses in mathematics and sciences, he acquired a lifelong interest in literature. After graduating in 1878, he spent two years studying civil engineering at the Royal Polytechnic School in Hanover, Germany, and then returned to begin his professional career.
Career
Goldmark's early work was chiefly in the construction of railroad bridges. He had field experience with the Erie Railroad, with the Texas and St. Louis Railroad (the Cotton Belt Route), as supervisor of a locating party in Texas, and with the West Shore Railroad of New York before turning, in 1884, to the study of metallurgy. Visiting a variety of metallurgical and structural plants, he developed a thorough knowledge of metals which he applied, over the next few years, in advising a number of railroads on the safety of their bridges and on how to reinforce them so as to accommodate increasingly heavy train loads. Because of his familiarity with structural problems, Goldmark was hired in 1891 to assist in the design of several of the largest buildings at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, including the famous Machinery Hall. His next important commissions were to design a steel dam for the Pioneer Electric Power Company of Ogden, Utah (1896), and, with George S. Morison, the Connecticut Avenue viaduct, a concrete arch over Rock Creek Park in Washington, D. C. (1897). From 1897 to 1899 he was design engineer with the United States Board of Engineers on Deep Waterways, which was then completing a study on the feasibility of a ship canal from the Great Lakes to tidewater. He had been interested for some time in deepwater technology, having in 1891 written the report of a committee to investigate the failure of the South Ford Dam. In 1899, while resident engineer for a railroad and highway bridge over the Missouri River at Atchison, Kansas, he delivered a series of lectures, later printed by Cornell University, on the history of locks and lock gates for ship canals. His interest in waterways was at this time, however, clearly secondary to his structural work, and from 1902 to 1906 he designed and supervised the construction of several locomotive and car shops for the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Goldmark's varied interests, together with his knowledge of deep-water technology, led in 1906 to his appointment as one of the design engineers of the Isthmian Canal Commission. He spent two years in Washington drawing up preliminary plans for the equipment of the Panama Canal locks, and then six years at Culebra in the Canal Zone supervising their installation. Goldmark's principal contribution to the historic project, of which Gen. George W. Goethals was chief engineer, was the design and installation of the lock gates and of the chain fenders, huge chains spanning the channel which when raised would protect the gates from possible damage by a drifting ship. He also designed valves and electrical equipment for the canal's operation, and movable caisson emergency dams. When work on the Panama Canal had been completed, Goldmark moved in 1914 to New York City, where he opened an office as a consulting engineer. From 1914 to 1917, with General Goethals, he helped design the New Orleans Inner Navigation Canal connecting the Mississippi River with Lake Pontchartrain; he was chiefly responsible for the lock gates, valves, electrical machinery, and a new type of movable steel stop-log emergency dam. Shortly afterward he was appointed to the board of consulting engineers on the New York Barge Canal. In 1919, for the Japanese government, he designed the gates, valves, and electrical equipment for a new harbor at Chemulpko, Korea. Later work included investigations for a proposed hydroelectric project in South Carolina and for a tidal-electric project in Passamaquoddy Bay, Maine. Goldmark also served as chairman of the committee to pass on the plans for the United States Navy dirigible Shenandoah and the army's semirigid airship RS-1, and in 1927 he designed loading equipment for the Seatrain ships to carry railroad cars between Havana, Cuba, and the United States. Goldmark retired in 1928 and settled in Nyack, New York, where he died at the age of eighty-three from injuries suffered when he was accidentally struck by a car. He was buried in Hartsdale, New York, the home of his sisters Josephine and Pauline.
Achievements
Goldmark was a noted civil engineer, known for his industrial projects.
Membership
Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (1923-1926), member of the National Research Council
Connections
Goldmark was twice married: on September 25, 1892, to Louise Condit Owens of Kansas City, Missouri, who died in July 1897; and on June 8, 1899, in Detroit, Michigan, to Mary Carter Tomkins of New York, the daughter of an Episcopal minister. He had two children by his second marriage, Elliott Regina and Henry.
