C.A.P. Turner

Who was C.A.P. Turner?

Claude Allen Porter Turner was an American structural engineer who designed a number of buildings and bridges, particularly in the midwestern U.S. states of Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

Turner was born in Lincoln, Rhode Island and attended Lehigh University's school of engineering in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, graduating in 1890. He worked for several companies in the Eastern United States before moving to Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1897. He formed his own company in 1901 and received a patent in 1908 for an innovative flat-slab support system, known as the Turner System or the Spiral Mushroom System, using reinforced concrete, although this patent was invalidated in 1915 and 1916 in favor of similar patents filed by American engineer O.W. Norcross. Turner's patent, however, was licensed to overseas designers including Hugh Ralston Crawford in Australia.

Turner would eventually receive 30 patents related to reinforced concrete. He died in Columbus, Ohio in 1955.

Notable designs by Turner include:

the Marshall Building in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1906

the Lindeke-Warner Building, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1909