University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The Grainger College of Engineering

Charles Edmund De Leuw

[title]
To Charles Edmund De Leuw, engineering consultant, for his distinguished contributions to the problems of urban transportation.

Chairman of the Board, De Leuw, Cather & Company, Chicago, Illinois

  • BS, Civil Engineering, 1912

Early in his career, Mr. De Leuw served the Illinois Division of Highways in various official capacities. Later he was a consultant to the Chicago Department of Subways and Superhighways from 1941 to 1944. This period covered the major portion of the era of subway construction of that city. With the advent to toll roads, his firm became involved in the design of turnpikes in Oklahoma, Ohio, Indiana, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Florida, and Virginia.

The first major subway to be constructed in North America subsequent to World War II, the Toronto subway, was engineered by the De Leuw, Cather organization. His firm has also undertaken subway assignments in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Washington D.C. and Sydney, Australia.

The currently widely-accepted concept of integrated transportation systems, combining various modes of transportation in a single right of way, was pioneered by De Leuw, Cather & Company in the early 1950s. The success of the Eisenhower Expressway, with rail rapid transit operation in the median of the highway, has led to adoption of similar plans for extension of rail rapid transit along the Dan Ryan and Kennedy Expressways in Chicago.

Current as of 1969.