Tunnel Boring Machine Named After Trailblazing Engineer
The month of March is set aside each year to celebrate the extraordinary achievements and contributions of women in our country. Therefore, DEP has chosen to pay tribute to trailblazing engineer and civil rights activist Nora Stanton Blatch Deforest Barney by naming one of the world’s most advanced tunnel boring machines in her honor.
Nora was a noted suffragist and the first woman in the United States to earn a civil engineering degree. She also worked as a draftsman on the City’s first reservoir and aqueduct in the Catskill Mountains, and was the first female member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
To commemorate her pioneering career, DEP has emblazoned “NORA” on the $30 million tunnel boring machine (TBM) that will be used to repair the Delaware Aqueduct, the world’s longest tunnel. The name was selected after DEP held a naming contest and solicited ideas from employees. More than five dozen employees submitted names for the TBM. The name “Nora” was sent in by Sarah Acheson of the DEP Archives, who was familiar with Nora’s past work with the Board of Water Supply, the historical context of her achievements, and her deep roots within the women’s rights movement.
Nora attended Cornell University and earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 1905. She was the first woman in the United States to earn a college degree in civil engineering. That year, she also became first woman to join the American Society of Civil Engineers. After she graduated from Cornell, Nora worked as an engineer and draftsman for the American Bridge Company, Radley Steel Construction Company, and the New York Public Service Commission. Later in life she became a developer and architect on Long Island and in Greenwich, Connecticut.
From 1906–1908, Nora worked as a draftsman for the New York City Board of Water Supply, which was developing the first parts of the Catskill Water Supply System. She was paid $1,200 per year for her work — the highest salary for draftsmen at the project. All the others fulfilling that job were men. A 1908 story from The New York Times said she had “done much difficult work on dams and weirs” for the project — an explanation that would suggest she drafted some of the infrastructure for Ashokan Reservoir and the headworks of the Catskill Aqueduct.
Nora was also noted for her work in the women’s rights movement. She took inspiration from the other women in her family. Her grandmother, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, authored the “Declaration of Sentiments” that was presented at the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, marking the start of an organized push for women’s rights and women’s suffrage in the United States. Nora’s mother, Harriot Stanton Blatch, was also a noted suffragist who injected new energy by broadening the movement to include working-class women in New York City, and by organizing parades up Fifth Avenue, protests at Carnegie Hall, and lobbying efforts at the State Capitol in Albany.
Nora continued in that tradition. She founded a suffrage club at Cornell, became president of the Women’s Political Union in 1915, and led the charge for an Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would have guaranteed women equal rights in the workplace. The amendment was not ratified, but it has been debated in Congress almost every year since it was introduced, including as recently as 2015.
Nora Stanton Blatch Deforest Barney died in 1971 at the age of 87.
Her achievements will provide considerable inspiration as we forge ahead with the largest repair in the history of New York City’s water supply.
