Michael C. Robinson, executive secretary of the Public Works Historical Society, prepared the following biographical sketch.
It first appeared in the APWA Reporter 49 (March 1982).

One of the leading lights of the public works profession has been extinguished. When Samuel S. Baxter passed away on February 7, 1982, the City of Philadelphia and the nation's engineering community lost an individual of exemplary ability, character, and charm. The roll of his accomplishments is long and enviable, but perhaps his most lasting and memorable legacy was his rare personal qualities. Sam Baxter was truly a public works “man for all seasons,” who, in the conduct of his professional and personal life, served as a paradigm for other engineer-administrators. He was self-effacing, bold, creative, competent, and adhered unwaveringly to the canons of his church and profession. Furthermore, he displayed a high degree of sensitivity to people, political acumen, ethical courage, and level-headedness under pressure that few public works leaders possess.

With the exception of military service during World War II, Sam Baxter spent his entire life living and working in Philadelphia. He was born in the city on February 6, 1905, attended public school, and graduated from high school in January 1921, just before his sixteenth birthday. He obtained a job with a sporting goods firm, but spent his evenings at Drexel Institute (now Drexel University) studying municipal engineering. One of his instructors was Thomas Buckley (APWA President, 1937), who was a senior engineer for the city. Buckley encouraged Baxter to take a civil service examination for a surveying position, and the young man became a chainman in a district field office in February 1923. Thus began a 49-year career of service to the city of Philadelphia.

From 1923 to 1932, Baxter gradually moved up the ranks in various positions in the field and central office. The work included project designs, property surveys, and field engineering in connection with sewer, water, and street projects. In 1932, Buckley (who had become assistant chief engineer and surveyor) offered Baxter the job of reorganizing a division that had jurisdiction over city plan works, project title records, and similar responsibilities. At that time, the city was laying off a number of employees due to the Depression, and Baxter accepted the job despite a $300 reduction in pay.

The young engineer displayed outstanding management and organizational abilities that caught the attention of superiors. Buckley and others gave him a series of difficult special assignments during the 1930s. In 1937 he was placed in charge of preparing plans and working with the State Highway Department on a series of street construction projects in the city. In 1938, John H. Neeson, Chief Engineer of the Philadelphia Department of Public Works (and President, 1931-1932, American Society of Municipal Improvements, APWA predecessor organization) made Baxter the coordinator of WPA projects in the city. Rarely has a public works administrator been given such a varied and challenging task. The projects ranged from making doll dresses to building highway ramps, from copying old records to renovating the exterior of Independence Hall.

The complicated and frustrating job brought Baxter to the attention of Mayor Robert Lamberton. Thus, at the age of 35, he became Assistant Director of Public Works, jumping over other more experienced engineers, including Tom Buckley, his patron. The new job gave Baxter day-to-day responsibility for a broad range of public works, including water, sewage, streets, highways, airports, public buildings, and street lighting.

In the late 1930s, Baxter joined the army reserves in the Administrative Corps of the Medical Department. After being called to active duty at the outset of World War I, he was able to gain a transfer to the Corps of Engineers and was assigned to build an airport in Philadelphia (now North Philadelphia Airport) Baxter next received one of the most interesting assignments of his career. The top-secret Manhattan District of the Corps of Engineers was seeking engineer officers, and Baxter landed the job of designing, constructing, and operating the entirely new town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. On a virgin hillside in a relatively remote area, Baxter was in charge of creating a town to house 70,000 scientists, engineers, and workers engaged in the atomic bomb project. As the town manager, his duties included renting housing, organizing and financing a new school system, and finding managers for department stores, beauty shops, and a host of other services.

After several other military assignments, Baxter returned to Philadelphia as Assistant Director of Public Works. In a subsequent departmental reorganization, Baxter went back to the Bureau of Engineering and Surveys, where Tom Buckley was Chief Engineer and Surveyor. Due to the Depression and war, there was a tremendous backlog of work on bridges, water plants, sewage treatment plants, airports, and many other projects. He was given the title Projects Engineer, later Chief Engineer, and placed special emphasis on the design of a number of sewage treatment plants built during the 1950s. Other important assignments during this period were the design and construction of a new terminal building for the Philadelphia International Airport as well as the Walnut Lane Bridge, the first prestressed concrete bridge built in the United States.

The adoption of a new city charter in 1952 brought about a dismantling of the Public Works Department and the creation of several new departments to carry out public works functions. A Water Department was established with responsibility for all functions relating to water, wastewater, and stormwater, including design, construction, operation, and maintenance. By charter it had the unique requirement of having to operate entirely from revenues, and it was given the authority to set its own rates.

Baxter was asked to become the first commissioner of this department, and served in this capacity until 1972, holding the concurrent responsibility as its chief engineer. Under his leadership, the new sewage plants were built in the 1950s, and three water plants were completed by 1965. Rapid sand filters replaced the old slow sand plant. In addition, meters were installed for all users, and an intensive program was launched to renovate and replace older water and sewer lines as well as construct larger storm sewers. The rate schedule was modernized and regularly updated, and the department was placed entirely on a self-sustaining basis. Furthermore, due to the strong engineering talent Baxter attracted to his department, he was often involved in other construction projects such as stadiums and airports.

Somehow Baxter also managed to serve as the city's emergency coordinator during this 20-year period. In this capacity, he had the authority to draw upon the resources of any city department to respond to emergencies. The work covered abroad spectrum of problems -snowstorms, floods, building collapses, gas explosions, and of course water main breaks and sewer collapses. Such incidents occurred periodically and resulted in Baxter being called out day and night. Despite his Republican registration, Baxter was appointed to five terms as water commissioner by Democratic mayors. But in 1972 the new mayor did not reappoint him and he left the city after 49 years in public works positions. After 1972 he conducted a private consulting practice in water resources and public works, generally assisting large engineering firms.

Baxter was one of the last of a breed in the engineering field that rose to high position without having earned a college degree. He was always active in numerous professional organizations and served as president of three: the American Public Works Association (1947), American Water Works Association (1966), and the American Society of Civil Engineers (1971). Locally Baxter served as President, Philadelphia Council, Boy Scouts of America; Chairman, Drexel University Alumni Association; Chairman of disaster services for the American Red Cross; and a board member of the Methodist Hospital. He was a Director of the East Girard Savings Association from 1929 until his death and had been Chairman of the Board since 1964.

When Baxter retired from city service in 1972, he made the following remarks at a dinner held his honor: “Reminiscences are for old men, it has been said, but I have also used the phrase, borrowed from someone else, that we do need a pipeline to the past, but not an anchor. Somerset Maugham once wrote that, 'Each youth is like a child born in the night, who sees the sun rise, and thinks that yesterday never existed.' There are people at all levels of government, in business and the professions, in civic groups, who seem to forget the legacy they owe to the past.”

This spring the Public Works Historical Society will publish an oral history interview held last fall with Samuel S. Baxter. It is the society's hope that it will capture the legacy he left to his city and professional peers. We all miss you, Sam.

Robert D. Bugher, executive director of the American Public Works Association, and Michael C. Robinson, executive secretary of the Public Works Historical Society, conducted this interview with Samuel S. Baxter in Philadelphia at the offices of the East Girard Savings Association on November 10 and 11, 1981.

Robinson: Sam, are you a lifelong citizen of Philadelphia?

Baxter: Yes. I was born and lived here all my life except during the war years. And my war was World War II, not any of the others.

Robinson: Has your family lived here for several generations?

Baxter: My mother and father were the only ones who lived in Philadelphia practically all their life. Although my mother was born in Ireland, she came to Philadelphia as a young girl.

Robinson: What year were you born?

Baxter: February 6, 1905.

Robinson: Could you give us an overview of your early elementary education?

Baxter: At that time, I lived in what was known as the “Fishtown” section of Philadelphia. A lot of fish were put on the market from the Delaware River. I went to elementary and grammar schools in that part of Philadelphia. They were boys' schools, no girls in them and then I went to Northeast High School in Philadelphia, which was also a boys' school. So all of my education up through high school was in public schools in Philadelphia.

Robinson: What was your father's profession?

Baxter: My father worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad all of his life. He worked in the freight area in a clerical job dispatching freight. He had a tremendous knowledge of the geography of the United States because of his job. He was somewhat of an ordinary man in one way and yet an extraordinary man in another. He had been born in Philadelphia. His father had come to the United States in the 1850s. He fought with Farragut at Mobile Bay but returned to Ireland shortly after my father was born. My father lived in Ireland and in England until he was maybe 21 or 22 years old. He did some school teaching. My father had interested me a great deal in reading--particularly English novels. I read Tom Swift but I also had English stories. My father brought me up on such things as Walter Scott's books and poems. In that way, he was not an ordinary man because he gave me a fondness for reading.

Bugher: Do you have any sisters or brothers?

Baxter: I have a retired brother two years younger than I am who is now living in Florida. At one time he was vice president of RCA. And I have a younger sister who is married to a dentist and they are also in Florida.

Robinson: In addition to being a voracious reader, what were some of your leisure time interests as a child and a young adult growing up in Philadelphia?

Baxter: I participated as a teenage in the Boy Scouts for four or five years. Aside from an interest in reading, my interests were in athletics. I was never big enough to play any kind of formal sports through my high school years. When I was roughly in the college-age group--18 to 28--sports were quite the thing in Philadelphia, played by club teams and all sorts of organized groups. So I had played football and a lot of basketball -what was known as professional basketball. Professional basketball was nothing like it is today. You either did your own job and played basketball at nighttime or, if you were on team-sponsored group, they gave you a nominal job and you played.

Robinson: Did the community or area of the city that you lived in have a specific ethnic character?

Baxter: The community I lived in until I was married at age 27 had this community background. There were a lot of mills in the area. The mills made such goods as lace, stockings, and the area had a lot of the people who had moved from England, Ireland, and Scotland who had been doing that kind of work in the mills in Great Britain. So that part of the community was known for its soccer teams. The high school that I went to won the soccer championship for about 30 years in a row, mainly because the boys in the high school had parents who had played soccer.

Robinson: In addition to athletics, were you or your parents active in any other community or church organizations?

Baxter: I picked up an interest in church work as a youngster and at that time belonged to a Presbyterian church in my neighborhood, and participated in the usual work of the young people's organization. I soon became a leader on Sunday night, and sat at meetings attended by my peers. I look back and say it was one of the best things to give me training in public speaking because I' d get up maybe once a month before a group of people my own age and talk.

Robinson: Were your interests in public works and engineering kindled while in high school?

Baxter: It was kindled while in high school primarily through a teacher. If you can imagine teachers in high school wearing frock coats and white beards. He was one of those. He sponsored the engineering and the surveying teams or clubs in high school. It was through him that I developed an interest in engineering work.

Robinson: While in high school, did you consider entering into any other profession or did you have any other great interest?

Baxter: I didn't consider it at that time. To a certain extent, my own parents didn't think very much of having their youngsters go to college, or go into the professions. It was a neighborhood where you worked in a factory or office.

Robinson: Did you engage in any part-time work while you were in high school?

Baxter: Yes. I made chip baskets. Chip baskets are something you don't see much on the market anymore but they were made with thin strips of wood woven together. They were used to carry things. The factory was close to where I lived so I worked frequently after school.

Robinson: What kind of social activities were available to youth in those days?

Baxter: The high school classes would run a couple of dances at a nearby country club. The churches had meetings from time to time. I think I was somewhat left out of that, mainly because I had skipped so many grades in primary and grammar school. I was roughly two years younger than the men in my high school class.

Robinson: I take it that you were an honor student?

Baxter: No. I had normally good grades, but I was just younger than the rest. Actually, I graduated from high school before I was sixteen years old.

Robinson: What year did you graduate from high school?

Baxter: In February 1921.

Robinson: What was the name of the high school?

Baxter: Northeast High School, Philadelphia.

Robinson: Did you take up an occupation as soon as you graduated?

Baxter: First of all I'll tell you about the high school courses. During those days, the high schools (at least the one that I attended) had three courses that you could choose. One was called an academic course. These were intended primarily for men who were headed toward college. The second was called the manual training course, which gave training in manual work. And the third was a commercial course in which you learned commercial things ranging from how to run a typewriter to bookkeeping. I took the manual training course and that course included all of the academic subjects that the academic group took, except that we were not required to take one of the classical foreign languages, Greek or Latin. We still had to take three periods each a week of metal work and woodwork --ranging from making molds, pouring lead, chipping and filing on iron work, tinsmith, pattern making -all of those things in addition to academic work.

Robinson: Was it an asset to learn to work with your hands?

Baxter: I think it was an asset. It served me very well in my work later on in life, particularly when I was managing a public works department that had machine shops that did mechanical work.

Robinson: When you graduated from high school, did you have any professional ambitions at that time?

Baxter: None, Mike. The main point was that '21 '22 was a depression period. Everyone needed to work, there were children in the family and I worked in an office for about a year, a mill a couple of blocks from where I lived, doing routine clerical work. The mill was the A.J. Reich Company. Reich was a manufacturer of sporting goods that made the American League baseballs. I worked there for about a year until I decided that I wanted to do something else.

Robinson: After your employment with the sporting goods company what was your next position?

Baxter: I learned that Drexel Institute in Philadelphia (now Drexel University) had an evening college which had several courses. One of them was entitled “Municipal Engineering.” I applied and entered that school in the fall of 1922.

Bugher: You mentioned that in high school you participated in that surveying club?

Baxter: In that surveying club we visited engineers and did simple outside surveying work.

Bugher: Were any of the people you went to high school with in this evening course?

Baxter: Not from any of my classes. I would like to say that that same high school class will meet next week as it has for the last 40 years, so I know for certain that none of them went to that evening class at Drexel. Fortunately, I still had some of the interest that old high school teacher instilled in me. I realized that the clerical job I had at Reich was just something to bring money home in a pretty tight situation.

Robinson: Were you still living at home at this time?

Baxter: I was still living at home.

Robinson: Was your income needed for your family to survive?

Baxter: I think it was. My father had just an ordinary railroad job.

Bugher: What were some of the impressions that you have of that period of Philadelphia and the environs in which you lived during the 1920s. Was there a lot of construction going on? I would think there would not be very much during the depression.

Baxter: There wasn't very much during that time. In the late 1920s, however, Philadelphia did start to do a lot of things. It got interested in the fact that there was a sesquicentennial exhibition in Philadelphia in 1926 so a lot of things went on as part of it. Then things got better in the whole country toward the latter part of the 1920s. We were heading for another real depression but nobody knew it.

Bugher: How did you get around? Did you come downtown much in those times?

Baxter: Most of my work with the city from the time that I started (1923 until 1932) was in a district office in one part of the city, which brought me downtown infrequently. The only time that I would come downtown would be the normal shopping times because in those years, the main commercial centers were all in the center city. There were none of the satellite communities that we have today.

Bugher: Did they have streetcars?

Baxter: Yes. The city had a big streetcar family. At its time, it was supposed to be a pretty good one. The management was supposed to look after its employees. My parents traveled frequently around Philadelphia because my mother had four sisters living here and the way you got around in those days was to ride the trolley cars. Before I was five years old I learned the streets and could call them out ahead of time. This gave my parents real problems, because they could never convince anyone that a four-year-old could name the streets. A four-year-old didn't have to pay any fare. And a nickel meant a lot in those days.

Bugher: How did you get to Drexel?

Baxter: By that time, an elevated system had been built. It made it very convenient for me to go to Drexel as it goes within one block of the university and the station was only a few blocks from my home.

Bugher: And you did that in the evenings a couple of times a week?

Baxter: Three or four times a week.

Robinson: Were the individuals in your class similar to you? From working-class backgrounds?

Baxter: Most of them were as I remember. I worked outside in the wintertime and the work was semi-physical. I was not working as a laborer or anything but was hauling things around and driving stakes. By the time I had been out in sub-freezing temperatures and then got into a hot schoolroom, one of the battles was to keep awake.

Bugher: Was that before you went to work for the city?

Baxter: I started Drexel in September of 1922 and this is where I first met Tom Buckley because he was teaching the surveying class. He was the one who suggested that I take a civil service examination to get a city job. I went to work for the city in February 1923.

Robinson: So you continued to go to school after you went to work for the city?

Baxter: Yes because the course that I took was called “Municipal Engineering.” It included surveying work for construction and land surveying, highway construction and maintenance, waterworks: all of the things relating to water from hydraulics to treatment, the same thing relative to sewage treatment. They also taught structures and city planning.

Robinson: Do you happen to recall the authors of some of the early textbooks you used in those courses?

Baxter: Yes. I had reason to actually go down in my basement to pull it out to be sure because of a Public Works Historical Society essay. The article was on Nelson Lewis. I went down to the basement to look for my textbook on city planning and he wrote the textbook.

Robinson: He was a past president of our association.

Bugher: Can you remember others at Drexel in those years on the staff besides Buckley?

Baxter: Nearly all the instructors were part-time adjunct professors.

Robinson: Were many of them city employees?

Baxter: Yes and civil engineers in the area.

Robinson: Do you think the fact that they were practicing engineers brought a certain practical quality to their instruction?

Baxter: I think it did, especially someone like myself, working for the city in a minor capacity. These were people involved in real activities. To have somebody talk about their day-to-day problems helped you realize it wasn't a theoretical thing but rather something you could see. On a lot of occasions, instructors would take us to work on Saturdays, not as part of the schoolwork but just as part of their interest.

Bugher: How big of a student body did the school have?

Baxter: At that time about 5,000. Sometime in the 1930s, the evening college program granted a full bachelor's degree.

Robinson: Were you able to obtain a degree?

Baxter: No. We didn't have at that time any of the courses now that you would try to place in career engineering fields, such as English or any of the so-called social studies.

Bugher: Obviously you became a registered engineer later on because of the experience you had. How did you go about this?

Baxter: The first registration that I had was as a land surveyor.

Bugher: Was that by examination?

Baxter: In Pennsylvania during those years there were not the formalities of today, such as required examinations. But my registration didn't come around until about 1940. You could back it up by having worked under somebody who could prove you were qualified.

Robinson: Was it during those years that you decided to pursue your career as an engineer?

Baxter: That's right. The city job was interesting work. In the early years, a lot of it was outside work -in the field on construction although I did a lot of work inside.

Robinson: Do you feel that Tom Buckley played a major part in confirming this decision?

Baxter: Without a doubt. I will probably during this interview come back to him in so many ways. He had a particular concern for young people like myself who showed that they had an interest in the work they were doing. I was not the only young man that he showed an interest in. I probably rose higher in the hierarchy than anyone he taught.

Bugher: Could you identify some personal traits that might have been responsible for his interest in you?

Baxter: The point was that from the very beginning I tried to show that I was ready to go if not a mile farther, at least an inch more than required and maybe do some things on my own. This also applies to another man who helped me a lot. A. Zane Hoffman was in charge of the district office where Tom Buckley and I worked. We had a district office in an old building and I remember one morning that the nails had started to come up on the old wooden steps outside. I got a hammer and went up the stairs and hammered them all down. Hoffman came out and he said something like “that's the most sensible thing I've seen anybody do around here.” But I guess I just did things like that anytime I saw anything was needed. Later on when we had a chance to do more, I would volunteer.

Robinson: What about your day-to-day work? What kind of activities were you engaged in for the city?

Baxter: From 1923 roughly through 1931, I worked in a district office that did land surveying, construction surveying, made plans for water lines and sewer lines, and did street-paving work. I also did anything that came under the jurisdiction of that particular district. So I started out the same as any ordinary civil engineering student would--a chainman or a rod man in a survey crew.

Robinson: Did you do any maintenance?

Baxter: No. There was no maintenance involved. This was new work and after working in the field I was brought into the office to make property plans or to make simple sewer or water plans. Many of the hydraulic designs for the water and sewer plans would be done downtown in the main office. We in the districts would work on the plans and work on the contracts.

Bugher: Do you recall if they had a department of public works at that point in time when you first joined?

Baxter: This district office was in the Department of Public Works. It was a bureau of the department.

Bugher: Who was the director at that time?

Baxter: It was a part of the old Bureau of Surveys in the Department of Public Works which had been established somewhere in the mid-1800s. The main Bureau of Surveys was a misnomer because not only did it do surveys it did all the engineering work for the city. In the 1920s, the director of public works was a man named George Biles. He was reasonably well known, at least in Philadelphia.

Robinson: Sam, as a young man in the 1920s were you active in professional activities?

Baxter: Yes I was and I think that's another important thing that kept me going. My involvement began in 1926. I was only 21 years old. I became a junior member of the American Society of Civil Engineers. There is a story behind it. As you recall, I said earlier that was the year of the sesquicentennial, and ASCE held its annual meeting in Philadelphia. Zane Hoffman was on the big committee to set up all the arrangements. One of the arrangements was to take the people down to the exhibits at the sesquicentennial grounds, on buses. The engineering and surveying bureaus needed somebody to be on each bus. But they wanted the people to be members of ASCE. I became a junior member of ASCE so I could be a bus conductor. I became active in the American Society of Municipal Engineers (ASME) as did Hoffman.

Robinson: Was there a difference in ASCE and ASME in terms of their organization, outlook, and character?

Baxter: They were separate. The ASME was a forerunner of APWA. There was the difference because ASCE had taken more difficult engineering problems and a broader aspect of engineering work. The municipal engineers, for example, weren't involved in big buildings, but ASCE was. Municipal engineers weren't involved in any coastal work and river dredging, although there was some interest in Philadelphia. Municipal engineers were primarily interested in municipal work: highways, airports, sewage plants.

Robinson: Did the municipal engineers' group also include private sector people?

Baxter: It included consultants at that time but not as many as we have now. In its early days (1920s) it was actually confined to city of Philadelphia people. Later on it broadened out (1930s) to take in the surrounding metropolitan area.
The point was that only those things that directly influenced the war effort were taken on. For example, if a new manufacturing plant needed a new highway, the answer was “yes.”

Robinson: What were some of the professional activities of ASME?

Baxter: The Philadelphia group conducted annual meetings and an annual banquet. At one stage, I was involved in selling tickets at another I worked on the dinner committee. It was not so much the importance of my involvement but you had to start some place. I was reasonably well known. Well known enough, that by 1937 I was the president of the Philadelphia Chapter. Buckley and Hoffman particularly got me interested in the beginning.

Robinson: Did the group involve people such as foremen and superintendents in addition to engineers?

Baxter: It did, especially in such things as the annual dinner when it wanted a great big group of people to come out. Its normal meetings involved more the professionals and the paraprofessionals and the senior operating people -people who would be superintendent of the incinerators, for example -people who would not normally be engineers, but nonetheless an important person. We're talking about the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Robinson: Did you go to any of the national meetings during this period?

Baxter: I started to go to the national meetings. The first one was in 1938 in Rochester. We sent a delegation up there and we paid our own way. These were very tight years for cities.

Robinson: How many people would you get to an annual meeting in those days?

Baxter: Probably a couple of hundred for a national meeting.

Bugher: You mentioned in your remarks down in Atlanta that the Philadelphia Chapter was a substantial percent of the total.

Baxter: Of the total membership.

Bugher: We had 700 or 800 members at that time and I think Philadelphia had like 235 or 260, something like that.

Baxter: Those figures are correct. At least they're in the annual report of one of those years.

Robinson: Do you recall what some of the issues and concerns were of the municipal engineers in those days--the kinds of subjects that people would be speaking on at chapter meetings?

Baxter: Believe it or not, they were some of the same ones we have today. One was, particularly in the 1930s, “We don't have enough money for maintenance.” People like Sam Greeley and others were outspoken on that subject. The Public Works Administration (PWA) program of the federal government and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) were very important items in those days. So one of the questions of those days was how do we handle those things? Where do we get our share of the PWA when we don't have any money? This is similar today -where do cities get their share to participate in some federal programs?

Bugher: Back at that time you were pretty much concentrating on surveying and other technical aspects?

Baxter: I was not involved in surveying at that time. My title was assistant engineer in what was then called the Bureau of Engineering and Surveys. With my left hand I had certain record-keeping functions under the title of registrar. I had certain city planning functions as well as all sorts of odd jobs thrown at me by Tom Buckley who was by then my immediate superior.

Bugher: I gather that you weren't involved in PWA projects but you were involved in the WPA?

Baxter: Right. I was put into that.

Bugher: But didn't the city get into that (PWA), too?

Baxter: The city did very little about it. But what the city finally did at the tail end of it was at least arrange to have contract drawings made. WPA projects were organized quickly. You did them without formal bidding. In the PWA, you had formal contracts, took bids, and there was federal money. The city finally got into it by having plans made for three sewage treatment plants. When I came back from the Army in 1946 and was asked to take charge of the three large sewage treatment plants, all we had to do was to bring those three plans up-to-date and get going.

Bugher: So it was feasible to use advance planning?

Baxter: It was advance planning that was done. The engineers were Greeley and Hansen.

Robinson: Sam, I'd like to back up just a bit to the 1920s, when you were doing your first fieldwork. Did you have a feeling that Tom Buckley saw you as one of the young and upcoming boys in the department? Were you given opportunities for development that perhaps others did not receive?

Baxter: I think the answer is yes. Although I wouldn't want to say that others did not receive the opportunity. There were always questions involving both Buckley and Hoffman, who had meetings with the main office people -the public works directors office, and the chief engineers office, many times the city solicitors office for meetings involving problems on legal contracts. If my time was available, they would take me to those meetings even if I had no contact with the project. This allowed me to see what was going on a couple of steps above me. I definitely recognized that they deliberately did it.

Robinson: In terms of attention to the professional development of young people, was that a quality you tried to develop as you moved up to higher positions and responsibility?

Baxter: I tried to do it. I showed you a picture of the time I talked to a group of young people -either high school or college students. I said on the night of my retirement dinner how much I owed to Hoffman and Buckley in my early days and how much they had given to me. If I had only helped one person I'd perhaps have repaid them, but if I'd done it for two or more my cup runneth over. I know a young man who worked for the city who now has his own consulting practice. He has grown to be a national director of ASCE. He wrote me a letter and said, “Your cup must be running over because you sure did it for me.”

Robinson: From your perspective as a mature public works leader, what qualities in a person indicate he or she has some spark of greatness?

Baxter: First of all you do not deliberately look for that. You see it coming out in someone. Someone who goes a little bit further than he has to. Someone who goes in to his superior and says: “Well now here's a little bit different way or a better method, may I try that?” Once someone does that then they've got your attention. During the time I was water commissioner (20 years) I used about six young men, not all of them engineers, as administrative assistants to the commissioner. They were all people who I expected to rise to top positions in the department. And I wanted them while were young to see what was going on in the boss's office. They had a desk right outside my own office. I took them to meetings the same way I had been taken. If I served on a committee--and by that time I served on many --I'd have that person attend in my place. Then, generally after two or three years, he'd be ready to be moved into a position of higher responsibility.

Robinson: Sometimes career development doesn't always payoff for the person who is doing it?

Baxter: No it doesn't. But if you say you're never going to do that, then you lose the man who does stay with you. You have to take some losses in order to get some gains. We had a program of tuition payment for men who were taking masters courses at two or three of the universities in the area. We made special arrangements so that if a course was at 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon they could be let off early. All of those men did not stay with us. But many of them did and formed a very fine group of young people.

Robinson: Did you take interns in at any point? Full-time college students for the summer season?

Baxter: Yes and we had a special reason for doing that. The regular courses at Drexel are cooperative. In other words, students work six months in industry and six months at school and the term to get a degree is five years instead of four. We kept a large number of those co-op students working.

Robinson: Do you think more attention should be given to professional development?

Baxter: I'd have to say I believe more of this should be done by public works administrators. And I wrote something on that just a couple of days ago. I was writing concerning a conference to be held in the next week or two on the problems of the decay in the infrastructure of the older cities in the United States. And one of the problems is, “Do we have enough municipal engineers and what can we do to train them?” I say there are two answers to that particular question. One of them is that there are more competent people in the field of municipal engineering and public works than many people realize. But second, municipal and public works departments ought to go after and search out the young people in the schools and somehow interest them. And that's not a theory on my part. During my 20 years as water commissioner, we sent teams of two men to about 20 universities every year to find out who might be interested in working for the Philadelphia Water Department. The team was generally a young engineer who knew the work, and we always sent an administrative person who could answer the questions of salary and how much vacation time, etc. When we found people who were actually interested, we brought them to Philadelphia for a day or two--paid their way and showed them what we had in the Water Department.

Robinson: So it pays to stockpile talent?

Baxter: It pays to stockpile talent and it pays to go after them.

Robinson: When the Depression stuck in the 1920s and early 1930s what was its impact on the operation of the public works department in Philadelphia?

Baxter: Basically we had a new mayor who came into office in January 1932. He was faced with the fact that the city was practically broke. Taxes weren't able to meet costs. Thus, he ordered the immediate cancellation of every contract, even for work that was half-started. Every cutback was used, including dropping as many city employees as was possible.

Robinson: You mentioned that revenues had fallen off to critical levels. What kinds of revenues were not coming in as a result of the economic downturn of the city?

Baxter: The basic revenues for the city you had at that time were real estate revenues. But the real estate taxes were not being paid. Properties were being foreclosed by the hundreds and thousands every month. Since he had stopped all public works construction contracts, and cancelled any that was started, the personnel cutbacks were severe in the engineering and public works departments.

Robinson: Who made the decision as to what activities and departments would be cut?

Baxter: They were made by the mayor.

Robinson: He determined what manpower reductions would be?

Baxter: Yes, with maybe abroad designation. Where I was working in the Engineering Division, the number of employees dropped was at least two thirds. A small number were kept to keep some things going.

Robinson: These were people principally involved in design and surveying?

Baxter: That's right. At that time, Tom Buckley was assistant chief engineer and had the responsibility of making a great many of those reductions. I got involved in it this way. The actual cuts were made June 1, 1932, and I was still working in a district office. I believe I was then getting something like $1,800 a year. That wasn't bad for someone who worked for the city at that time. Buckley told me that I was on the list of people in the classification that was going to be dropped. He had a division in town called the Registry Division whose primary purpose was keeping records of the ownership and size of all the lost in the city. This information was primarily used by the tax office for assessing purposes. He wanted to reorganize that group because it had gotten too much involved in politics. He asked if I'd be willing to take that job.

Robinson: How old were you at this time?

Baxter: Twenty-seven. Of the twenty-five men in that division, everyone of them was older than I was.

Robinson: In addition to what you just described, did the office have any other responsibilities?

Baxter: They did reports, made studies, maintained the records of the city plans, but mainly these people were clerks and draftsmen.

Robinson: Did you have to carry on the activities of this office with reduced forces?

Baxter: With some reductions. It was comparatively easy to do because the office was over-staffed. It didn't make it any easier to take the responsibility to say this or that one would be fired or laid off, but the city was in a tough spot. I took that job at a reduction in salary down to $1300. It moved up again within a year or so. I took it because Norma and I had planned to be married in October of that year so the question was do we cancel the marriage? Do we go to live with our parents? Or if we're going to be married at least that much would pay for rent and food.

Robinson: When you took the job at your young age, did the thought of operating an office by yourself intimidate you or cause you some anxiety?

Baxter: I don't think it did. I hope I had some of the normal hope to progress and do something better and new. If I hadn't had it at the time I would have said “no.” But here was a chance to be moved from a district office. Incidentally, there were 10 district offices in Philadelphia doing the kind of work I was involved in. This was a chance to move downtown on the same floor as the chief engineer and to take charge of something. Looking back, the thought to do so was in me even if I didn't recognize it.

Robinson: You mentioned that from your current perspective the job was rather easy. But did it offer any special challenges or problems that you had to deal with?

Baxter: Making sure that some of the people got rid of their bad habits of coming in late. Getting them to do the work with the decreased amount of staff. Handling the tremendous amount of real estate transactions. Incorporating modern and organized methods to complete the work. In addition, this same office had the responsibility of being the repository for all the city plans prepared by a board called the Board of Surveyors. The job put me directory in contact with the planning agency for the whole city.

Robinson: Who were the members of the board?

Baxter: Members of the board were the people in charge of each of the district survey offices. In the 1930s, there were opportunities for planning because you weren't doing much else. If you go back through the yearbooks of APWA, you will find much on planning for after the Depression. Everybody was doing planning.

Robinson: Were most of the people involved in the planning engineers?

Baxter: Primarily.

Robinson: That's not at all common today with respect to city planning.

Baxter: No.

Robinson: How do you account from this change from engineers to an entirely different profession with a somewhat different outlook and training?

Baxter: The engineers as a group, not as individuals, let themselves get involved in too many technical details. They did not look at the broad picture of what was needed for the city. Tom Buckley was an exception. If Buckley had a specialty in the public works and engineering field, it was city planning. Remember I'm talking about the 30s, 40s, and 50s when he was at his full activity. When it came to building a sewer, for example, he saw more than just the hydraulics, its design, diameter. He saw it as a public works function that was going to give service to people. I think those engineers left a vacuum, which was filled by people who came in as professional planners.

Robinson: Did the city make any effort to derive alternative sources of revenue in light of the loss of income from real estate taxes?

Baxter: Yes. There were two. First, the city established what is known as the wage tax. It's an income tax. Second, it charged sewer rents to support the sewer and sewage disposal system as distinct from pouring general revenues into it. The water rates had been collected separately even though in those early days they did not fully support the system. Philadelphia was one of the first larger cities that made a separate charge for sewer and sewage treatment services. This charge was not fully approved in the U.S. Supreme Court until after I came back from the war.

Robinson: Was there a concern with some of the same issues we have now such as infrastructure decay and those sorts of problems that are associated with revenue shortfall?

Baxter: First, nobody used the word infrastructure at that time. Compared to today the sewer and water lines were 50 years younger and weren't in such a state that anything was happening to them. Of more importance, the heavier trucks which are now on the highways didn't exist, and the structures were not damaged by these and oversized vehicles.

Robinson: In your position as assistant city engineer and registrar were you given any other special assignments?

Baxter: This was the time that Buckley was looking ahead at the city planning that was going to come along when the Depression ended. I was given all sorts of special studies to make, most of them local in one sense or another. One I do remember was in 1937 when the state first assumed responsibility for certain highways in the city. Again, I made a few suggestions from the preliminary plans and was told, “Why don't you do it?” So I was given the responsibility of making the state highway plans using their format (a format we never used for making city plans).

Robinson: Did it involve working with state highway engineers?

Baxter: Yes. I used my own draftsmen or got one or two engineering people transferred into my unit.

Robinson: What was the funding format for the projects that involved both the municipal and state efforts?

Baxter: In the early days, if work was done on a state highway within a city, the city would pay the cost of preparing the plans and the state would pay the contract costs. This was the reason why the city, having no other large unit directly assigned to make contract plans for state highways, had to use my unit. As the work became greater, the city then started to hire consulting engineers. Under today's program the state pays all of the work costs.

Robinson: At this time who maintained the highways within the city boundaries?
Baxter: The designation of certain streets as state highways also required the state to maintain them. But like many things, in the 1930s, there wasn't much maintenance. The problem now has gotten to the point that the city, in order to partly protect itself from citizens who complain about anything from potholes to poor maintenance on state highways, now has signs posted every quarter of a mile giving the local telephone number of the state highway department.

Robinson: In addition to your work with highways, did you have any other special assignments during this period?

Baxter: There were all sorts of special assignments. Buckley had a very fertile mind.

Robinson: Do you feel this kind of work broadened you as an engineer?

Baxter: Oh yes, tremendously, because it allowed me full rein to wander around not only other city agencies but to work with outside people.

Robinson: In those days, did you have any direct contact or relationship with elected officials in the city?

Baxter: I didn't have any direct contact with them, except maybe at a dinner meeting (and that would be casual) until 1940. Then I had almost daily contact with the mayor who was new, Robert Lamberton, and that had to do with WPA work.

Robinson: Did the city ever undertake any PWA projects during this period?

Baxter: To my recollection the city never built any PWA projects. The Public Works Department did use money to prepare plans for three new sewage treatment plants. After 1936 the city did get into WPA projects. The person assigned to have charge of all these projects was John Neeson.

Robinson: What was his title?

Baxter: He had the title of chief engineer and surveyor of the Public Works Department. Around 1938 this work (WPA) was taking up so much of his time that, as somewhat of a freewheeling division head, I was given the title of WPA coordinator, which meant that I was placed in charge of all WPA projects.

Robinson: What kinds of projects were being undertaken when you took over?

Baxter: Everything. In one case, in order to take care of the people in the clothing factories, we even made doll dresses. We built miscellaneous things, like highway ramps. We got into minor construction. I remember one project in particular because of what might be called its social effects. There were a great many engineers and architects out of work. The city had many records that were wearing out, just from use. One of the series of records was under my department. There were literally thousands of detailed maps of every lot in the city, complete with their dimensions, plus tens of thousands of pages showing the entire line of ownership from 1865. These things were kept up-to-date but they were used by the public. They would gradually get torn or smeared and needed replacement. We had one big project in which all those original records were recopied. Top-level architects and engineers, many of them way above my ability and experience, worked on the WPA project.

There was no unemployment compensation at that time. If you didn't make money on a WPA project, you borrowed money from your friends, or you lived with your parents, or if you were lucky enough and you were older, you had a son you could live with. One of the things I tried to do as WPA coordinator was work that had some value, and even though it was heart-rending to see hundreds of such qualified people doing such menial work.

Robinson: The WPA was often characterized as people leaning on shovels and rakes. You mentioned you tried to include projects that had value and merit. What were some of the public works-oriented projects that you oversaw?

Baxter: There was work such as maintenance of streets and highways. In the summertime there were grass-cutting programs. There was work to be done in the parks. There was painting of structures that needed to be painted: bridges (particularly iron ones). We tried to do projects that had some overall value to the city. This was the time that I did get involved with elected officials, because the city had to put up a certain amount of money to match the WPA or put up a certain percentage of the project in kind. And that wasn't so easy when the city had no in-kind to put up.

Robinson: How many people were working for you?

Baxter: I can't remember exactly, but there were an awful lot of them. There was a certain amount of money to spend which brought me in direct contact with Mayor Lamberton. Just as Hoffman and Buckley had given me the opportunity to see people, John Neeson gave me the opportunity to see the mayor directly even though I was an assigned employee of his bureau. Since some of the projects involved the city council, I got to know some of the councilmen. Then there were people of all sorts in the city who were interested in having a WPA project done. These included civic organizations and political leaders.

Robinson: In light of all this responsibility, who had the final decision as to what projects would be undertaken?

Baxter: I think I probably did. Except WPA also assigned an engineer to look after its interests. At least from my experience, WPA in Philadelphia tried to live up to the federal legislation.

Robinson: Did you have to be careful about making sure the projects were distributed geographically in the city?

Baxter: It wasn't so much geographical because the impact of the projects wasn't very great. The point was that with the numbers of people out of work, as an example, you wouldn't dare let the construction people get the jobs while factory workers or others remained idle.

Robinson: You had to be sensitive to the needs of the citizens in the community who were out of work?

Baxter: Heavens, yes. Use the skills they possessed and to a certain extent spread the work around so that it could be seen in different places.

Robinson: Did you often have to be involved in discussions with community groups and politicians that wanted certain projects undertaken?

Baxter: Not so much with community groups and politicians at that time. There were discussions, I'm sure of that. But the main point was trying to get almost any kind of things going. There were enough ideas but not enough money or personnel to design them.

Robinson: Were the largest percentage of the projects construction projects?

Baxter: No. I would guess no more than maybe one-third of them.

Robinson: In addition to the maintenance activities you mentioned and construction projects, what other kinds of endeavors did WPA undertake in the city. For example, did you get involved in art and theater as some other communities?

Baxter: Yes. I remember being involved in some way with a small neighborhood art group.

Robinson: Do you feel that the people working for you were able to take care of their economic circumstances and recover some of their self-esteem?

Baxter: Yes. If the whole thing happened today, when a person can draw unemployment and other kind of compensation, some people would recover some of their self-esteem if they could get a minor job such as WPA. I also think that that are a number of people today who would rather stay on compensation and take welfare, rather than go out and work for the same amount of money or in some cases less. I guess we've gotten used to handouts of one form or another.

Robinson: How long were you in this capacity as WPA coordinator?

Baxter: I was in it, in one form or another, from roughly the beginning of 1939 until I went on active duty in the Army in the summer of 1942.

Robinson: What percentage of your time did it take?

Baxter: It took most of my time because while I still had some overall responsibility with the old Registry and Plans Division, there were other people carrying it on and I only had nominal responsibility.

Robinson: What position did you hold after your involvement in these WPA activities?

Baxter: The next position I had was a real jump for me at least in terms of titles. I became assistant director of public works. Now at that time the Public Works Department had bureaus under it--the Engineering and Surveys Bureau which covered sewers, it had the Water Bureau which covered water, it had the City Property Bureau which included city buildings, the Highway Bureau in charge of all the streets and highways. It had the sanitation bureau, which did all the refuse collection. It had the Mechanical Equipment Bureau, which maintained equipment for all city vehicles, and it ran the airport and also did the street lighting. The director of public works was actually the top banana and the assistant director was next.

Robinson: What year did you take this position?

Baxter: In the early part of 1940.

Robinson: How old were you at this time?

Baxter: Thirty-five.

Robinson: How do you account for someone of your relatively tender years being given such responsibility?

Baxter: Again, it was somewhat being in the right place at the right time. The circumstances account for a great deal. John H. Neeson was at that time the director of public works. Buckley was the chief engineer of the Engineering and Surveys Bureau. Traditionally, for many years, the assistant director of public works had been a politician whose main duty was to look after the appointments of labor and such things as that. Neeson decided he did not want a politician and he brought in an engineer as assistant director. Unfortunately, this person got into a situation which made his position untenable. I was working for Neeson doing the WPA job he wanted plus some other things. But my WPA work had kept me in direct contact with the mayor so I was in a sense in the right place at the right time.

Robinson: Had the overall organization of the Department of Public Works changed at all during the 1930s?

Baxter: No. Our primary concern at this point was the amount of work and responsibility for studies Neeson would carryon in his office. The director of public works office was reasonably small. There was the director, a couple of secretaries, and a chief clerk. Neeson wanted a second person to whom he could assign jobs and ask to review things that the bureau chiefs were sending up for decisions. That's why he wanted an experienced engineer. And that's the kind of work I got from him. The Bureau of Mechanical Equipment, for example, was run at that time by a very likable Irishman, who had grown up from the ranks but knew nothing about administration or organization. He was also involved in politics. That bureau had to be completely reorganized and I was given the assignment.

Robinson: Do you feel your experiences as a WPA administrator, as well as the other special assignments, gave you a versatility and overall view of the city's operations that perhaps others might not have had?

Baxter: It did give me an overall view of the city's operations. I knew the chiefs of the bureaus from my involvement in public works because each of them had some kind of WPA operation even though they might not have paid too much attention to it. I had to deal with them to get a job started. It certainly made it easier that I knew them when I became assistant public works director. I probably knew some of them through my Philadelphia APWA Chapter work. But at least when I did get the position, I could walk in and they wouldn't say: “Who is this young whippersnapper and how did he get here?” They at least accepted me.

Robinson: Had the economy of the city recovered to the point where it could once again think about undertaking large public works endeavors?

Baxter: The economy had recovered but not enough to make them start thinking about large public works projects because the main emphasis was the war effort.

Robinson: How did that influence decisions with respect to the public works projects?

Baxter: As I recall, the public works during this time that were being built were either directly related to the war effort or had some effect on the war effort. Very clearly in public works there were three major things that had been talked about in planning. One was to completely modernize the city's water system. And I'm thinking specifically of the treatment system. The city had built slow sand filters roughly in the 1900-1910 decade. They were really engineering marvels at the time. The plant was the largest in the country. These filters were well worn out. They had little maintenance during the 1930s, just enough to keep them going. The city's sewage treatment plant was another concern. It was a small 6 million gallon plant built in 1922, which by that time was outdated. So the city was prepared to build new modern rapid sand filter plants, new treatment plants for the sewage of the city, but these had to be put on the back burner because of the war effort. And a third project was an airport, which also had to be defined. The point was that only those things that directly influenced the war effort were taken on. For example, if a new manufacturing plant needed a new highway, the answer was “yes.”

The city before the war started to build its second airport, the North Philadelphia Airport. And while I'm partly jumping a little ahead on this, I have to do it to answer the question. The Public Works Department negotiated with the district engineer of the Army Corps of Engineers to acquire a site in Philadelphia to build a field for interceptor airplanes. I was the principal negotiator with the district engineer to acquire this site. Incidentally, this North Philadelphia Airport was built as an interceptor site to fight off the German bombers that people at that time thought were able to come over and attack American cities. My first assignment, once to called active duty in the Army, was to build that airport.

Robinson: Was there any incentive to consciously make the economy of the city recover?

Baxter: I don't think so at that time. The war effort had put all sorts of people back to work. I'd have to go back to look at records to see what the balance sheet looked like for those years, but certainly during this time things were moving.

Robinson: In 1940 and thereafter, was there an increase in the number of engineers in the public works department?

Baxter: People were being brought back for whatever work there was. This was an interesting point, because I saw this after I came back from the Army. Normally an engineering department or public works department brings in young people. There are always newer people coming in, older people retiring, middle-aged ones moving up the ladder, etc. There were so many city people dropped in the 1930s due to the Depression. After the war we'd lost senior engineers, so we were out actively recruiting. After the war, we hired consultants when in previous years we would have used in-house staff. But it took the city a fairly long time to get younger men to come in and at least give them the opportunity to take responsibility on their own.

Robinson: Because of your position immediately beneath Neeson on the organizational chart, did you have a perspective on the kinds of political pressures that were often exerted on the public works director?

Baxter: Yes, because I think that Neeson deliberately wanted an engineer as an assistant director rather than a politician. He wanted someone who knew the department and could act as a buffer between him and the political organization. For example, if there was political pressure to keep an employee who was fired for cause, that pressure would go primarily to Neeson, who'd send it on back to me and ask what he could do because if he fired a man for cause Neeson wanted him to stay fired. But often the pressure was really strong to give the man another chance. If the violation was not flagrant and he happened to be able to enlist the sympathy of the chairman of the finance committee of city council, and if it was close to budget time, the pressure would be great to say: “Well give that man another chance.”

Robinson: Were there ever efforts by politicians to initiate public works projects in a particular part of the city, for example?

Baxter: Oh, sure. That's perfectly proper in a sense. Most of the kind of things they would want done would be to widen a street, or build a new street in a new area of the city, or if we had a bridge that was posted for a load-limit, to get that bridge done. These were the kinds of things political leaders work on. And I see them as perfectly proper. In a perfect condition, I would like to think that the employees of a public works department (from the director on down) would be able, as an example, to schedule abridge for reconstruction when a load limit was placed on it, before any political leader would start to say: “why don't you rebuild that bridge.” But this perfect condition doesn't exist. I'd always hoped, especially when I had a department myself, that we would get to things that needed correction with our own forces before any kind of political pressure came along.

Robinson: Would the political leader come to Neeson and ask him to make a request for an appropriation for a certain project, or would one try to approach somebody on council?

Baxter: Well it happens both ways. In those years, and it went on through the years when I was department head with the title of commissioner in the water works department, the political people on the council, the political people who were the ward leaders, had a reasonably good opinion of the public works and engineering staffs of the city.

Robinson: Would they at times defer to your judgment?

Baxter: Yes. If they thought there was some project in their district that they would like done, they would come to the public works director or would come to the water commissioner and say: “What do you think about this?” In later years it was a little bit easier because the council passed a six-year budget so you could spread things out. Back in the days of Neeson I don't believe we had the six-year capital budget. Every year we would go to council with our budget. And during the two years that I was assistant director of public works we'd sit before the council and go down the budget line by line. I was the one that sat in the chair and took the beating from the council. I would argue like hell on some particular thing, then in the final wrap-up Neeson would come in and he would agree to some of the things I would say no to. I was only saying no because that was the arrangement. But the point was that in giving up some things, we got others at different times that we thought we couldn't get.

Robinson: This may seem like a mundane question, but how were citizen complaints handled?

Baxter: Hopefully not as good as later on. At least we started to handle them pretty well in the Water Department. Most of the departments did not have any specific arrangements to handle customer complaints or even customer requests. This easily led to the fact that a person could telephone in and get pushed around without anybody deliberately wanting to be discourteous. They would get somebody on the phone and by the time the guy would try to transfer them, you might get the wrong department or even lose the connection altogether. There is nothing more annoying, whether you're calling a city department or a department store, than that.

Under the new charter, which went into effect in 1952, the mayor's office had to set up an office of information and complaints. Part of the mayor's own office theoretically can be called by every citizen. But that meant they would still have to transfer complaints back to the Water Department, etc. So I set up in the Water Department my own consumer office. The mayor's office was interested in showing the public that it was handling complaints. I was not interested in the mayor's office. I was interested in the Water Department and in handling its complaints first hand. We even had a special telephone number in the front of the telephone book. Citizens could call and would not be transferred. They talked to a customer service agent who would take the complaint or request and get them an answer.

Robinson: When did you start getting involved in the military?

Baxter: About 1937. At that time working in our sewage division was a man named Michael J. Blew together with another man, Bill Hardenberg, who many people in public works know -he was the publisher and editor of Public Works magazine for a long time. Both of these young men had been officers in what was known as the Sanitary Corps of the Medical Department of the Army in World War I. They served in France and kept that unit alive during the 1920s and 1930s and went on active duty for two weeks in the summertime. Mike and I knew one another in the public works department and it was somewhere around 1937 Mike said to me: “Sam, we're gonna get into a war. You might as well get in it now.” So I went into the reserves as a second lieutenant in 1937. And because even then the Army had restrictions as to the number of people they were taking, my reserve commission was in the Administrative Corps of the Medical Department. That's the outfit that runs hospitals for the Army. But I trained with the sanitary corps from 1937 on. They allowed me to do that.

In 1941 the Army decided it was necessary to build airports around Philadelphia to protect the city against German bombers. These were to be for interceptors. One of these airports is now the North Philadelphia Airport. So that's how I started. The airport's still used primarily for private airplanes. Lot of freight and commuter lines stop there.

Later on that year, I received a circular from the Army saying it was setting up a school at the University of Virginia to train Army officers in the military government occupation of captured countries, primarily Germany. I sent the application in. As a result of that application, I had a call to go down to Washington, D.C., to meet a certain Major Johnson in the Corps of Engineers' office. This man asked me how I'd like to work in Tennessee for the Corps of Engineers. It turned out that the Manhattan Project (Atom Bomb Project) was just getting started and they were intercepting any requests for transfers to fill a lot of positions.

Robinson: Would this have been in 1942?

Baxter: Yes. My experience caught their eye -assistant director of public works with a lot of planning experience in 1930s. This is where I was sent and of course. Again, it was sort of a combination of being in the right place at the right time, having my title of assistant director of public works, showing them that I had planning experience. The original plan was to build a town (Oak Ridge) for 10,000 civilians--it grew to be 75,000. We built it on a virgin hillside in Tennessee in a very short time under terrific pressure. Not only did I have the direct responsibility for supervising the design and construction but also the management of the town -bringing in the department store, the beauty shops, the churches, every other thing. Nobody has ever had an experience like that, except those who worked along with me. I was at that time the senior person for the Army. The architect-engineer firm was Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. They made a reputation at the New York Worlds Fair but nothing like the reputation they have now in building the Sears Tower.

Robinson: What was the relationship between you and the people in the architectural firm?

Baxter: It was excellent. John Merrill was living at that time. He was a resident partner. Skidmore and Owings would come down about once a month. And I used to tell people that my main job was to get the two of them out of town immediately. Mainly because every one of them had ideas of their own on what should be done. The three of them coming in and debating while I was under instruction from the Army to have a 5,000-person unit ready by next Monday was a little hard to take.

Bugher: How long did the job take?

Baxter: It took about three years.

Robinson: How big was the labor force?

Baxter: It moved up and down. It varied. I don't know the numbers. Once we had gotten the first 10,000 units built there would be a staff meeting in which the Army would say to me: “We need another 10,000-person unit. And we need it at such and time.” We'd go right back to the office and order so many feet of pipe and so many feet of lumber to build the houses. We'd know immediately that for 10,000 people that would be roughly 3,000 houses so we'd then order 3,000 refrigerators, 3,000 heaters, etc.

Leonard Orlando (vice president, Philadelphia Gas Works, who briefly assisted in the interview): When you plan a town like Oak Ridge for 10,000 units and you put in a water distribution system, and sewage system, and so on, how did you expand on these when you had to suddenly grow to 75,000?

Baxter: You didn't ask questions. How do you win a war? You just do it. There was duplication and loss of efficiency but the work just had to be done.

Bugher: Was the Manhattan Project just something that was conducted at Oak Ridge or was it done elsewhere?

Baxter: No. It was conducted in many places. One of the larger units was at Hanford, Washington, which was the place the Dupont Company had the main operation. Where they made the plutonium. The other large operation was in the Los Alamos area in New Mexico. This was the place where they put the bomb together and triggered the first one.

Bugher: When they conceived the project, why did they go to Oak Ridge?

Baxter: I think the reason was they needed a source of electricity. And it was remote. If I told you all of the amusing stories connected with this we could use all of Mike's tapes.

Robinson: Tell us one.

Baxter: Believe it or not, on the Clinch River, which was the river from which we took the water and discharged the sewage treatment plant, the sewage treatment plant was upriver from the water intake point. There was nothing basically wrong with that if you look at it from design--it just looked wrong. That particular design had been done by Stone and Webster before I got involved in the project. And it was done as a separate unit. The kind of people who came into town were all educated people. Physicists, scientists of all sorts, etc. And they all had questions to ask. I still remember taking some of them down to the sewage plant to show them that it was perfectly sound.

Bugher: You had a lot more to do there than simply building the city. Who did you report to and how broad of an authority did you have?

Baxter: It was all part of building a new town. I reported to the man who was then a colonel named Nichols.

Robinson: Was he the manager for the Manhattan District or just that part of the project?

Baxter: I can't remember whether his authority went beyond Oak Ridge or not. He was the top man. Originally, there was another colonel who left because he'd gotten into some kind of a wrangle. His name was James Marshall and he later became director of highways for the State of Minnesota. James Marshall was the first district engineer for the Manhattan Project, but only for a very short time. He was actually the one who directly hired me. He's the one with the timetable who kept telling me: “Look, Baxter, let's get things done. If you have to break regulations, go ahead, just let me know ahead of time so that I can protect myself and protect you.”

Bugher: Now that sounds like practical instruction. How much time did they give you?

Baxter: I don't remember the times involved but all of them had a practically impossible time schedule to meet. And they kept adding on to it.

Robinson: Did any of the Army top brass show up at the town?

Baxter: The man in charge of the whole Manhattan Project was General Leslie Groves. Groves would come down about once a month. We were all compartmentalized. He would go around with his secretary and anything he saw that he didn't like he'd dictate to his secretary right while I was standing there. He was always trying to make sure you didn't do more than what you had to and that you didn't do anything fancy. He found some fault with the nice planning and layout we were doing, but this didn't cost us much. I can remember the day he walked into the high school when it was finished, said something nasty, turned on his heel, and walked out. I also got into an argument with him about the tennis courts I'd built. He and I were both tennis players and I forget what the disagreement was about.

Robinson: Did he come to the site very often?

Baxter: At least once a month. One point to remember is that Groves was under a tremendous amount of pressure. He had more pressure and greater stress than anybody else. He knew that the Germans were also working on some kind of a nuclear project. So with that pressure--in addition to the pressure from people in Congress saying: “You're wasting money on the war effort”--he certainly had his work to do. I didn't appreciate that until after the war was over.


Bugher: Did you know, when you were there, anything about the project?

Baxter: Only slightly. I would like to talk about the town plan. Every one of the streets had little cul-de-sacs going around them, which the houses were built on. The main street was Tennessee Avenue. The first street going up the hill was I think Florida. Then there was Georgia. The streets went up alphabetically. On Florida for example, all the cul-de-sacs that went off were all streets beginning with the letter F. Everyone of these street names was picked out of Boyd's Directory of street names for Philadelphia.

Bugher: Have you been back to Oak Ridge?

Baxter: Once. I went back maybe 15 years ago to speak at the dedication of a new Knoxville water plant. While I was there the man in charge of the new water plant along with others had arranged for me to go to Oak Ridge, look around, and visit with the mayor. They had a dinner for me in what was the old guest house.
Among other things that I did down there, I built a hospital. The chief of medical services for the project was Stafford Warren. He was brought in there as a reserve colonel. At that time he was the head of the radiology at a hospital in Rochester, New York. I got to know him well and he was very thankful that I had built this hospital. Incidentally, this hospital was run by Army reserve doctors from St. Paul, Minnesota. That's the way the reserves were run, as a field hospital of some sort. So the whole outfit moved down there. We built with a minor amount of complaints a hospital Warren thought was wonderful. So just about the time I finished Oak Ridge, Warren had a research project going on up at Rochester, New York, on the effects of uranium on human beings -from the time they would mine it to when they would transport it, down to the point of what they did with it to make the bomb.

While that 400-unit facility was primarily for civilians, there were about 10 medical and engineering officers there and about 25 enlisted men. None of the enlisted men had a rank lower than sergeant. By that time, the Army had run into problems because they were commissioning too many civilians. So the Army got around this by getting these people drafted as they graduated and sent to boot camp for four weeks. Then they would send them up here to me or some other place. These people could have cared less about Army regulations.

Anyhow, this unit up here wasn't getting the results that Warren wanted. So I spent the last year of the war in Rochester. I was sent there to get the scientists going rather than have them doing work on interesting research that had nothing to do with the project.

Robinson: Were you successful in imposing some discipline on those scientists?

Baxter: I think so. We used monkeys, and of course we were supposed to be a secret project. People knew we were there but they had no idea at all about what we were doing. We had 12-15 monkeys, which were being exposed to radiation under different conditions and amounts of time. The day I arrived one of the monkeys escaped and got in the park. That landed in the newspapers. Rumors started flying saying if the monkey bit you, you'd die right away. The phones started ringing. We finally caught the monkey with a crate with an orange in it. The real point was that I couldn't tell anybody why we had to get him back. Any of the other monkeys we could have shot and it wouldn't have mattered. They were all in different stages of experiment. This guy was the control monkey -he had never been exposed!

Orlando: Sam, I was interested in your comment about how these hospitals were manned by reserve units from a hospital. I don't know whether you knew it or not but the University of Pennsylvania manned a hospital in India?

Baxter: Oh, sure. That's how they were organized. If possible they try to get them all from the same local hospital. This is similar to the way the Corps of Engineers will train and get together units for active duty.

Robinson: What happened once you got out of the Army?

Baxter: I got out of the Army right at the end of 1945. John Neeson had died in the late fall of 1945. The man who became director was Martin McLaughlin. He had been chief of the Water Bureau at one time in Philadelphia. McLaughlin was primarily an electrical engineer graduate from Villanova University. We all came back to the same jobs we had if they were there. I came back as assistant director, but McLaughlin did not want an assistant. He wanted the bureau chiefs to do all the work. He only wanted to do a minimum amount of overseeing. He had been a bureau chief himself and thought they could handle it.

Baxter: He didn't say in so many words: “Get out of here, I don't want an assistant.” I knew he didn't. He wouldn't have somebody come back from the war and tell them they couldn't have their old job back.

The city was facing two big projects. The first was three new sewage plants, for which the plans had been partially prepared under PWA contracts before the war. The other project was building a new airport terminal. So after some consultation I decided to go back to the Bureau of Engineering and Surveys, which Tom Buckley was the chief of at the time. I was given the title of projects engineer, which involved getting the sewage plants built and the airport going.

In a very short time, McLaughlin died. John Allen who had the title of principal or chief engineer, and Fred Thorpe who was at one time president of the Philadelphia chapter, had the title of assistant chief engineer and surveyor. Well, with the switching around after McLaughlin died, Buckley moved into the directorship. Hoffman who was over here moved into the chief engineers' spot. I (going in as project engineer) had the title of chief engineer, which meant I headed the engineering for that bureau and Thorpe headed the survey end of it.

Robinson: So this is in the Bureau of Engineers?

Baxter: That's right. The Bureau of Engineering and Surveys.

Robinson: In light of the fact that you'd gone through a decade of depression along with another five years of war, was there a sense after the war that you had a huge backlog of projects that needed to be built?

Baxter: There were a whole lot of things that had to be done. And that's exactly what happened. The street lighting was one. The city only had one little sewage plant built 50 years prior. I held the title of chief engineer through 1949. We got the first sewage plant built at Northeast before the charter change, which occurred in January 1952. The other two sewage plants were finished in the 1950s under the new charter. We also got started on the construction of the airport. The effort was guided primarily by Tom Buckley and a citizen on the Chamber of Commerce named Walter Miller. I commuted regularly between the FAA office in Harrisburg and the FAA office in Washington trying to deal with the administrative details of that project. Starting the new airport included extending a runway, building a new administration building, and a new ramp. We started to build on the day the conflict began in Korea. This immediately changed the plans. Anything that had stainless steel had to come out and we had to redesign. I worked on the airport that was the assignment from 1946 to 1951.

Robinson: You handled design all the way through construction?

Baxter: Design, construction, and ultimately operation. We also had grants for the sewage treatment plants. These grants were for 30 percent of the cost not to exceed $250,000. The first contract we had was for $25 million and so all we got was a measly $250,000. You didn't get anywhere near the 30 percent unless you were a small town. All of the councilmen, the mayor, and citizens said we had to get all the federal grants we could. They didn't understand that we were losing more than $250,000 just by following federal rules and awaiting federal decisions.

Robinson: During this period, when there was a great deal of construction going on, was there a lot of competition among the various bureaus for funds?

Baxter: We did not run into that with the jobs I had so much for this reason. You'll recall that I told you that Philadelphia was one of the first cities (and probably the first large city) that had enacted sewer rents. In order to get this program going (even prior to World War I) the city needed borrowing capacity to sell its bonds. There was a legislative limit, which the city had reached.

Bugher: For general obligation bonds?

Baxter: For general obligation bonds. That's exactly the point, Bob. Since these rents were for a new type of revenue bond that money didn't have to come within the debt limit of the city. The whole thing was challenged in the court. But finally the ordinance was approved all the way to the United States Supreme Court--the court refusing to take jurisdiction from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which had approved it.

Robinson: You used those funds to build your treatment plants?

Baxter: Yes we did. We used the capital funds to support the sewer system. Those funds still provide the 25 percent the city spends on new treatment work. The airport did get some money from the federal government, but not very much. By that time, the old airport was in such poor condition that everybody was for it. The Chamber of Commerce got behind it, and we received some federal grants. Meanwhile we had this Northeast Airport built. We had a councilman, who was chairman of the finance committee from the northeastern part of the city, who wanted an even split between the two airports. Philadelphia needed a main airport. It didn't need two half-baked airports.

Tom Buckley and I had a real battle in the council and we finally settled it by making do. We gave the councilman $1 million for the old Philadelphia airport -most of which went for an access road to get to the airport. The other $9 million then went to the new facility. When the new Water Department was created water and sewer were placed under one department with self-sustaining water rents to support the projects. From that time on I didn't have any competition with anybody else. The only competition would be that occasionally somebody would try to take some of our money.

Robinson: Just as a matter of clarification, after you designed and built the project under the Bureau of Engineering and Surveys was it then turned over to some other bureau.

Baxter: No. The Bureau of Engineering operated the sewage plants.

Robinson: Was there a separate water department at this time?

Baxter: No, there was a separate Bureau of Water.

Robinson: Within the Public Works Department?

Baxter: Yes.

Bugher: Regarding the storm drains, do the developers build these now or does the city?

Baxter: The city builds them for the developers, actually contracts them. The owners pay a front foot assessment charge which, when it was originally fixed some years ago, was approximately the cost. It evened out since it was on a front foot basis. But ever since I left the city about 10 years ago, they haven't adjusted the front foot rates so the city is now paying a larger amount of the cost.

Robinson: When was the Walnut Lane Project Launched?

Baxter: It was actually launched about 1949, but it had developed for a couple of years before that. The background on that is this. Walnut Lane crosses a main valley in Fairmount Park. Back in the early days of this century a very famous concrete arch bridge had been built on Walnut Lane. You'll find it written in all the transactions of ASCE and others because it was quite a bridge in its day. It's well known today, by the way, as a place where people who want to commit suicide jump off. But further east there was an old bridge, which, right after the World War, had gotten in such condition that traffic was banned. The bridge was closed to everything except pedestrians.

The Bureau of Engineering and Surveys traditionally had the responsibility for designing and building bridges in Philadelphia. It did not build the big suspension bridges over the Delaware. But it built the bridges throughout the city involving grade crossings and ones like the earlier Walnut Lane Bridge. During 1947-1949 we designed a concrete arch bridge over this small valley. We thought it was a nice design. It was. But the Art Commission, which had approval of the esthetics of the bridge, said it was too large and inappropriate for a concrete bridge to be placed in a park setting.

Robinson: In other words, the bridge was being built within the boundaries of a park so this Art Commission had authority to approve its design.

Baxter: Yes. But just from the standpoint of esthetics. In fact, they'd have the same approval even if it wasn't in the park but this gave their approval more weight then they turned it down.

Robinson: In other words, their authority was citywide?

Baxter: Yes. In fact there still is such a citywide commission.

Robinson: When was it created, do you know?

Baxter: It was created at least as far back as the 1920s and in the new charter of 1952 it was reconstituted. Any public building using public funds must have the approval of the art jury/commission. So much depends upon the people who are on that commission. There are some good, sensible people, some architects, some engineers, but an occasional opinionated person could make things difficult.

Robinson: Were the members appointed by the mayor?


Baxter: Yes. Then it was suggested to us that one way to make this bridge more attractive would be to put a granite face on the side of this concrete bridge. We tried to design it that way. But adding that load to the bridge required structural changes and the extra cost went beyond available funds.

These were the years when we were building the new sewage treatment plants. These plants had large tanks for sludge digestion. An option at that time was to build a circular tank using prestressed concrete. In those tanks, you wrapped the fine wires around that concrete and using a gun-Like method you sprayed the outside on. We were building concrete tanks of that sort and the pre-stressed technique was familiar to us. At various staff meetings we discussed applying pre-stressing to bridges. In the U.S. at that time there wasn't any such practice. But in Europe there was, particularly in Belgium and France. A man named Magnel in Belgium, and a man named Freysinnet in France had been building them for years.

They had started to build pre-stressed bridges because steel was expensive over there. Over here labor was expensive and steel was comparatively expensive. We got in contact with the people in Europe, particularly Magnel. With one of his students named Charles Zollman (who by that time was here and working on the pre-stressed sewage tanks) we worked out a preliminary prestressed design for Walnut Lane Bridge. In 1949 Zollman, myself, and Edwin Scofield, who was the chief of the design division in the Bureau of Engineering and Surveys, one or two others, and I think one contractor, spent a few weeks in Belgium and France looking over what Freysinnet and Magnel were doing. We weren't quite sure of what we wanted to do.

Robinson: Was this the common practice to send engineers abroad to view structures?

Baxter: It was in the Engineering and Surveys Bureau because when the city designed a basic sewage treatment plant in 1915 the engineers of that day actually spent two summers in Germany where sewage treatment was more advanced than any other part of the world. They also went to England, and their report of those years around 1915 shows that they went to see what other people were doing. At the present time, some of the European engineers come here, but in those days we went over there--for sewage treatment in the beginning, then, for prestressed concrete. It was decided to go ahead. The whole theory of the bridge is that, since concrete has a lot of strength in compression but none in tension, you placed the bottom of the concrete in tension by putting fine wires into it and really pulling the concrete together. That's a layman's description.
The design of the Walnut Lane Bridge was a team effort. Magnel himself came over, Zollman participated, and our own design group participated. At that time, I was the chief engineer. Sure, I participated. My main participation was in the fact that my name went on the plan and I was the one who “held the bag” if this new project didn't work. Then to be sure we knew what we were doing, the design was made, and the work was put out on contract. There were seven girders in the bridge (160 ft. long. But we hired a contractor both on the site and off the site to build a full-scale girder (before we built the seven main girders) and test it to destruction.

The day we tested it we had a little grandstand right there with people from all over the country and some foreigners. We had a steel plant nearby and we borrowed iron ingots so the weight would be put on. We tested all day long and by the time it got dark we still hadn't broken the girder. We were just so conservative and had over-designed the darned thing. The next day we finally loaded it up and broke it. That bridge received a lot of publicity at the time. Nobody built one as long until 10 years later. Today pre-stressed buildings and bridges are common, but we were definitely the pioneers in the United States.

Robinson: Did this project receive thorough press coverage?

Baxter: Yes it did. We made sure it got coverage. I gave a basic paper on what was done up at MIT afterwards.

Bugher: Do you think we could probably get a story from Engineering News-Record about that?

Baxter: Well Engineering News-Record probably has it. There are all sorts of publications on it.

Robinson: When was the bridge actually completed?

Baxter: Thirty years ago to the day. And it was a day like today; we thought it was going to rain.

Bugher: How far is it from here?

Baxter: Twenty-five minutes by car.

Bugher: That seems significant in the sense that it helps to demonstrate that a person in a position such as yours was so innovative in trying to adapt technical knowledge. And I guess what gave you the incentive was the shortfall on the funding?

Baxter: That's right. I had to find something. We talked about plaques last night at dinner. Normally when you dedicate something it only has one plaque. But that bridge has two at either side of it. The reason is at that time it was a boundary between two wards in the city and each ward wanted credit for getting the funding for the bridge (the ward leaders that is). So one plaque says the 21st ward and the other says the 22nd.

Tom Buckley was the director while we worked on the bridge. He supported all that we were doing. He did not participate in the details of it. This was the time when the Public Works Department as such disappeared due to the new 1952 charter.

Robinson: The city received a new charter in 1952.

Baxter: Yes. Though, it was written in 1951. There were many reasons for this and one of them was one that I had differences with Tom Buckley. Tom Buckley was the director and he had bureaus involving water, sewage, highways, street cleaning, airports, lighting, mechanical equipment, and others. As the charter writers began their work, he made the point that that conglomeration was too much for one man. He had been director of public works for about six years. I did not agree with him on that point except he was the guy sitting in that job and I wasn't. It's almost like saying we shouldn't have the United States of America because the presidency is too much for one man. So much depends on how you delegate and work things out. So that was one reason that it was split up. A second reason was that the writers of charter (and I supported them completely) wanted to pull out the water and sewer departments to make them a completely self-sustaining facility with separate funds and ratemaking powers vested in the water commission.

Robinson: So in effect some of the separate bureaus were turned into departments, or bureaus were combined to create individual departments?

Baxter: That's correct.

Robinson: Now at this time you had a major change in your career when this new reorganization took place. What was your new assignment?

Baxter: I was assigned as commissioner of this newly created Water Department with the respons