CTE: A Retrospective
It’s a long-held belief that 50% of businesses fail in their first year, while substantially more fail within five years – daunting odds for those who consider setting up shop. CTE’s fate may have followed along those lines when, in 1916, the firm organized; but, the principals answered the call of duty for World War I, and, the firm’s activities were curtailed for three years. With grit and determination, and a true pioneering spirit, CTE’s founders regrouped – literally – and launched an engineering firm that blazed a trail of infrastructure across the country, while firmly marking its territory in the Midwest.
To put our history in perspective, CTE has weathered two world wars and the stock market crash. During the year of our founding – 1919 – dial telephones were introduced, the 18th Amendment ratified, and members of the firm’s staff often traveled by horse and buggy. CTE has not only survived these tumultuous times, but thrived, because we are always on the pulse of the industry – from ushering in computers as early as the 1950s to serving on projects for the United States Government since 1940.
From the Ohio Turnpike to Milwaukee’s North-South Expressway, Chicago’s Calumet Skyway to the highways of Michigan, Iowa, and Pennsylvania, CTE’s first 50 years included plenty of ground-breaking work on America’s roadways. By the 1940s, CTE was revolutionizing techniques of traffic assignment and projection, and cost-benefit analysis. That era also marked the beginning of superhighway and toll road construction, which played major roles in CTE’s growth, becoming a staple in our portfolio of work.
Bridges engineered by CTE dot the landscape, from Marseilles, Illinois and Appleton, Wisconsin in the 1920s to Chicago’s Columbus Drive Bridge, dedicated in 1982, during Mayor Jane Byrne’s term. Stretching over the Chicago River, it was one of the largest movable bridges in the world at that time. A double leaf, trunion bascule bridge, each movable leaf weighs an amazing 6.3 million pounds.
“Our past is awe inspiring,” says CTE’s President Dick Wolsfeld. “This is a firm that employed four full-time computer programmers back in 1969. Urban renewal was a specialty of ours in the 1920s.”
And why – 88 years and counting – we’re still in business, showcasing our road and bridge expertise on ever more complex work, such as Chicago’s Wells Street Bascule Bridge, Indiana’s Toll Road, and Milwaukee’s Marquette Interchange. “We just continue to stay ahead of the pack,” Wolsfeld says.
