JOHN EDWIN GREINER
 Award-Winning Designer Of Susquehanna Bridge

 By Erika Quesenbery
 Curator Paw Paw Museum Port Deposit, MD

 
     John Edwin Greiner’s bridges made him known throughout the nation in professional and scientific circles, when he founded the J.E. Greiner Company of Baltimore. A native of Wilmington, Del., he was born Feb. 24, 1859, and attended Wilmington High School and Delaware College. First a draftsman with Edgemoore Bridgeworks and then Keystone Bridgeworks in 1885 he became involved with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company as a draftsman. Eventually, Greiner took the position of bridge inspector and assistant engineer of bridges of the B&O. From 1908 to 1941 Greiner entered private practice as a consulting engineer working on the following notable large railroad bridges over the Ohio River at Louisville, Kentucky; the Ohio River at Parkersburg, West Virginia; the Ohio River at Benwood, West Virginia; the James River at Richmond, Va.; the Alleghany and Monogahela Rivers at Pittsburgh, Pa.; architectural city ridge over the middle branch of the Patapsco River at Baltimore; over the Pequonnock River at Bridgeport, Connecticut; over the Norwalk River at South Norwalk, Connecticut; over the Tennessee River at Chattanooga; and the Memorial Bridge at Harrisburg, Pa.
Greiner built the railroad bridge over the Susquehanna River between Havre de Grace and Perryville, which earned the first prize given by the American Institute of Steel Construction for the most beautiful bridge in 1941.