Background
He was born on July 8, 1887 in Montrose, Pennsylvania, United States, and grew up in New York City. He was the son of James David Smillie and Anna C. Cook. His father, an artist, had helped found the American Water Color Society in 1866.
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Ralph Smillie
Edit ProfileEducation
Smillie received a B. S. degree from Yale University in 1909 and an engineering degree from Columbia University in 1912. He then returned to Yale to begin working toward an M. S. degree, which he received in 1915.
Career
Upon leaving Yale he secured a position with the New York subway system as a resident engineer in charge of steel plate construction. He left this position in 1917 to serve with the navy after the United States entered World War I.
After leaving the service in 1919, Smillie became an assistant engineer of design and later engineer of design for the Holland Tunnel, which connected New York City and New Jersey. Soon after receiving the appointment, he published an article in the Engineering News-Record offering a method for the simple determination of rivet pitch in metal-plate girders. The Holland Tunnel, completed in 1927.
Two years after the opening of the tunnel, Smillie became the transit engineer supervising a variety of projects for Newark, New Jersey. In 1933 he left Newark to become the engineer in charge of design for the Port of New York Authority. He remained with the Port Authority until 1945 and supervised the design work for a second Lincoln Tunnel tube under the Hudson.
In 1945 Smillie began a five-year stint as chief engineer for New York's Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority. The engineering for the construction of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, which opened between lower Manhattan and the borough of Brooklyn in 1950, was his principal assignment while at Triborough.
After the opening of the tunnel, Smillie left the Authority to form his own consulting engineering firm, Smillie and Griffin. This company provided engineering services for a variety of important projects in the United States and abroad during the 1950's; these included the third tube of the Lincoln Tunnel; bridge and tunnel projects in the states of Washington, Maryland, and Pennsylvania; a depressed limited-access highway in Boston; and a vehicular tunnel under the Fraser River in Vancouver.
Smillie died at his home in Essex Fells, New Jersey.
Achievements
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Ralph Smillie worked on design and engineer of design for the Holland Tunnel, that was the world's first to carry vehicular traffic beneath a river. Smillie worked on the construction of the Lincoln Tunnel, connecting Manhattan and New Jersey. He was also responsable for engineering of the construction of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. He founded his own consulting engineering firm, Smillie and Griffin and worked on tunnels for a highway from La Guaira to Caracas, Venezuela; highway approaches to New York City's Triborough Bridge and other projects.
Connections
While serving on the Holland Tunnel project, Smillie met and married the former Grace Cooley; they had three children.
