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Frederick Massiah, Engineer born.

Frederick Massiah

This date celebrates the birth of Frederick Massiah in 1886. He was a Black engineer and businessman.

Born in Barbados, Frederick McDonald Massiah immigrated to the United States in 1909, where he started as a laborer, working during the day and studying architecture at night.  He studied at the Pennsylvania School of the Fine Arts and earned a degree in Civil Engineering at what is now Drexel University.  By the early 1920s, he established his own business and was among the country's first successful Black contracting engineers. He established a construction business when it was almost impossible for Blacks to obtain financing, insurance, and acceptance in trade unions.

His methods of using reinforcements in concrete pre-dated the existence of widespread building codes in the 1920s.  Using a combination of concrete and steel acting as a unit, rebar in concrete, and high tensile qualities of steel allow concrete to stretch and twist with greater yield strength than concrete that was not reinforced while helping prevent cracks in the structures from changing in temperature and shrinkage.

His many accomplishments included the elliptical dome of the Ascension of Our Lord Church (the first structure of its kind in the U.S.), the William Donner X-Ray laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Sewage Disposal Plant in Trenton, N.J.

Frederick Massiah was awarded the Harmon Foundation Medal for Engineering for his outstanding beam and girder work. During 45 years of activity stretching into the late 1960s, Massiah was responsible for building many structures.  Frederick Messiah died on July 7, 1975.

To Become An Urban Planner
To become a construction worker