Story of the Great Falls Symposium
by Tom Flagg

One of the constants of the Roebling Chapter has been its annual symposium held every Fall. This day-long symposium consists of approximately half-hour illustrated presentations featuring the industrial archeology of the New York - Northern New Jersey region. We have always emphasized the "illustrated" aspect of these presentations, asking our presenters to get our audience fascinated with the industrial scenes they are talking about. Starting in 2010, the symposium is based in Paterson NJ and is known as the Great Falls Symposium. Previously, the symposiums were held at Drew University and known as the Drew Symposiums.

A full listing of the presentation titles at each of these symposiums can be found by clicking the Past Presentations link at the top of this page.

The first Drew Symposium was organized by Thorwald Torgerson, who was president of the Roebling Chapter and then the national SIA, and a tireless advocate for industrial archeology. It was co-sponsored by the Anthropology Department of Drew University (as it has been ever since). The date was Sept. 12, 1981 and it featured the first of many presentations by Edward Rutsch and also one by Abba Lichtenstein on historic bridges, plus presentations of slides showing past field trips of the chapter. The presentations were heavily illustrated with slides, setting a precedent that is still followed. Lunch was at the student center, and was included in the charge of $10.

The success of this symposium, and the hard work of Thorwald, set the pattern for years to come. The second annual symposium was held October 16, 1982, and included a movie on the Mauch Chunk Switchback Railroad shown by Lance Metz, a presentation by Ed Rutsch on a site at which he was then working, and seven other talks. This left no time for showing slides of past chapter trips, and it was decided to have these instead at the annual meeting in January, another tradition that we have kept.

For the third annual symposium (Oct. 19, 1983), lunch was served in the seminar room outside the auditorium, which has been the practice ever since. The food for this lunch was prepared under the direction of Nanci Batchelor, who (with her family) cooked much of it herself, a huge job for a large group like this; the typical audience is 100 to 150 people. Jim Lee gave a presentation on the Plane 9W Turbine of the Morris Canal, Lance showed another great film, Ed Rutsch was on again also, and Ed Lenik gave his first talk on an IA site in the region. We heard a presentation on the Baltimore Museum of Industry from Dennis Zembala: but this was very relevant because it was presented to give us some guidance in creating a museum of industry in our region. This of course has not yet come about.

In the fourth symposium Bill McKelvey gave his first Drew presentation, and Ed Rutsch and Lance Metz were back again. It is interesting to note that Lance and Bill went on to create their own annual symposiums, inspired in part by Thorwald's creation. The symposium that McKelvey' started takes place at Drew in the Hall fo Sciences also, in the spring, under the auspices of the Friends of the New Jersey Transportation Museum. The presentations here are generally more brisk at about 15 minutes long, and so there are more of them. Canal Symposium started by Lance Metz takes place at Lafayette University in Easton, PA, under the auspices of the Canal Museum. Its presentations are longer, and always accompanied by a published version of every talk. So Thorwald's efforts have resulted in three annual symposiums, each with its own distinctive character and tradition.

Thorwald decided to bow out after the fifth annual symposium, and the sixth was organized by Terry Karschner, of the state Office of New Jersey Heritage, which has co-sponsored the symposium ever since.

Terry's many duties with the New Jersey office made it difficult for him to find the time to devote to the Symposium, so the eighth one (Nov. 5, 1988) was handed off to Tom Flagg, who had just ended four years as president of the chapter, and who remains the symposium coordinator, with help from "co-cordinators" such as Allison Rachleff in some years. The RCSIA has had generous assistance from other chapter members. Nanci Batchelor has continued to supervise the food part of the symposium. Since 1997 we have used a caterer to provide the lunch materials. But she and her crew still need to arrange it, help set it out, and clean up afterward, and we are very grateful for their work there. We are also grateful to the Chapter's treasurers, formerly Charles Scott and currently Kevin Pegram, who have handled the financial and registration work.

We have made every effort to keep the admission price relatively low for an all-day lunch-included symposium. The fee is set to break even, not to bring in money to the chapter's treasury. And anyone may attend, not just chapter and SIA members; we have found this helps to recruit new members.

A major change occurred in 2010: we changed the location of the symposium from Madison, NJ (in Drew University's Hall of Sciences) to an industrially historic district in Paterson, NJ. Thanks for Gianfranco Archimede for persuading us to move there, and making all the arrangements for the use of an auditorium in the historic district.