Building a Fortress

U.S. army officer Joseph G. Totten superintended the construction of Fort Adams beginning in 1825. He oversaw all details of construction until 1838, when he was appointed as the first Chief Engineer of the newly created Army Corps of Engineers. The work used 2,952,418 bricks, 595,900 structural arches, 545,992 outerwork arches, 77,850 in tunnels, and embrasures, for a total of 4,172,160 bricks. The fort included 1,350 linear feet of tunnels, 1,420 in the southeast outerworks, 280 in the center outerworks, and 50 in the southwest outerworks and tenailies, totaling 3,110 linear feet, or .59 miles. Construction materials included 12,516 tons of bricks, 795,285 tons of soil, 62,784 tons of gravel, 48,461 tons of granite blocks, and 20,650 tons of rubble stone, for a total weight of 939,696 tons of materials.

Newport, Rhode Island · United States