Oscar Daniels, my great uncle, was born in 1869 in Norway and at age 14 went to sea -ending up as a first mate in the British Merchant Marine when he left to find his fortune in Chicago where he arrived in 1889. Chicago at that time was inventing what was then known as the skyscraper and the contractors building newly invented cast iron and steel frames for htese tall buildings valued men with sailing experience used to walking nimbly on the rigging of the tall sailing ships. Oscar Daniels was soon hiring his fellow former sailors from Norway to build these buildings and formed the Oscar Daniels Company to build the tall steel buildings. By 1900 he had offices in Chicago, New York , and San Francisco and was erecting building that remain today in those cities and many more across the nation. In 1894 he brought his nephews and nieces to Chicago to help with his fast growing business. Among them was my Grandfather Adolph H. Hansen who became vice president of the company. Among his more famous projects in Chicago were the erection the Marshall Field Building and of the Railroad Exchange Building designed by Daniel Burnham, the Heyworth Building on Madison and Wabash, and , and the London Guarantee Building at Wacker and Michigan-all of which are Historic Landmark Buildings today. From 1911 to 1918 his projects included many multimillion dollar contracts to build the subways of New York and in 1917 he opened the Oscar Daniels Shipyard in Tampa Florida to build large cargo and oil transports for the US Merchant Marine and Standard Oil. Before his death in 1938 his company built hundreds of buildings, bridges, and ships all across the United States, one of his last Chicago Projects being The Outer Drive Bridge in 1974. My grandfather Adolph Hansen and Donald Hansen continued the business until 1942 with the last project being the erection of the giant Atlanta Army Depot. Researched and written by Paul J. Hansen
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 17:25:59 +0000
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