{"slug": "making-of-the-new-york-and-erie-railroad-organizational-diagram", "title": "Making of the New York and Erie Railroad organizational diagram", "summary": "The article discusses the rediscovery and recreation of the 1855 New York and Erie Railroad organizational diagram, one of the first org charts in American business. Designed by superintendent Daniel McCallum and drawn by engineer George Holt Henshaw, the tree-shaped diagram aimed to improve accountability and communication, though McCallum's strict enforcement of rules led to employee resentment and the first American railroad strike. The chart remained obscure until historians Alfred Chandler Jr., Charles Wrege, and Guideon Sorbo Jr. researched its history, with Wrege and Sorbo proposing its design was based on the goat willow plant.", "body_md": "Org charts tend to be a rather boring affair—with their lists of names and who reports to whom—but they didn’t start out that way. One of the first in American business, is a stunning portrait of a classic institution—the New York and Erie Railroad. Drawn in 1855 and only rediscovered in recent decades, this diagram captured my attention and I finally took the time to recreate it from scratch as a fun technical exercise. What was unexpected was the depths I ended up going to in order to learn about its fascinating history.\nUnlike my previous projects, the source one was not a lengthy book with hundreds of illustrations or scientific explanations, but a single image available at the Library of Congress.\nThis sprawling diagram was designed by Daniel McCallum in 1855 shortly after he became general superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad and drawn by Civil Engineer George Holt Henshaw. He created it as part of his efforts to improve accountability, operational efficiency, and lines of communications throughout the complex railroad system. Unfortunately, his insistence on enforcing rules he devised to govern all employees ultimately resulted in their resentment toward him, financial difficulties for the railroad as a whole, the first strike of railroad engineers in America, and his resignation. He was later appointed by President Lincoln to take charge of the United States Military Railroads due to his bridge and railroad expertise (Wrege et al., 2005). Despite its origins and the outcomes it precipitated, the diagram remains an impressive feat of design that up until just a few decades ago was relatively unknown.\nIn 1977, railroad and economic historian Alfred Chandler Jr. described the diagram’s existence in his book, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business by referencing other publications that covered it shortly after it was originally published. Among them was one of his own published in 1956 about his great grandfather, Henry Varnum Poor, editor of the American Railroad Journal during McCallum’s tenure. In this book, Chandler described the diagram:\nThe design of the chart was a tree whose roots represented the president and the board of directors; the branches were the five operating divisions and the service departments, engine repairs, car bridge, telegraph, printing, and the treasurer’s and secretary’s offices; while the leaves indicated the various local ticket, freight, and forwarding agents, subordinate superintendents, train crews, foreman, and so forth (Chandler, 1977, as cited in Wrege et al., 2005).\nChandler didn’t include an image of the diagram in his book and it remained relatively unknown until 2005 when two researchers, Charles Wrege and Guideon Sorbo Jr. consulted with him for their article, A Bridge Builder Changes a Railroad: The Story of Daniel Craig McCallum in the 24th volume of Canal History and Technology Proceedings. In their article, they detailed Chandler’s descriptions of the diagram and included Poor’s original description from the American Railroad Journal, in which he describes the diagram as “got up in handsome style”—a turn of phrase that I thoroughly enjoyed.\nWrege and Sorbo also described its resemblance to a tree, hypothesizing that the tree was chosen because of McCallum’s history as a Freemason. However, they were disabused of this when a masonic representative stated, that\n…trees or horticultural metaphors-with the exception of the Acacia as a symbol of hope, rebirth or renewal-play no role in the teachings or rituals of Freemasonry. (Wrege et al., 2005).\nAfter much research, they proposed the idea that its organic design was based on the Salix caprea or goat willow—a plant commonly found in the counties around the railroad. They support this notion by comparing drawings of the Salix caprea’s stems and leaves to elements of the diagram and even overlaying a drawing of a Salix caprea directly on top of a mirrored version of the diagram, creating a rather messy, albeit apt comparison, noting:\nThe Salix caprea’s fan-shaped appearance, rounded oval leaves, and specific shape of the branches compare favorably to similar elements of the Erie Plan.\n…one can readily see the close comparison of the distribution of the willow branches and leaves in the picture to the branches and leaves in the Erie Plan. The curvature of the branches and leaves in McCallum’s design follows the typical weeping branches of the Salix caprea. The fact that railroad operations, while mechanized, require great flexibility on the part of the employee, also reinforces his use of the willow in symbolic form. Finally, in comparison to the narrow lanceolate leaves normally associated with willows, the oval leaves of the Salix caprea closely resemble McCallum’s round leaves. (Wrege et al., 2005)\nWhile this sounded plausible, it’s my amateur opinion that it was somewhat over-elegant because of its convenience. There are indeed similarities between the diagram and the Salix caprea but not enough evidence to draw a direct connection. I believe the diagram has an organic nature not because of a masonic history or connection to the local flora but because a tree-like branching diagram simply lends itself well to the hierarchical representation of the employees. Regardless, the diagram is a beautiful and functional artwork worthy of many kinds of analyses.\nA great piece of ephemera was included in Wrege and Sorbo’s article in the form of an advertisement for the diagram from July 14, 1856 that appeared in the American Railroad Journal stating that it could be purchased for $1 for thick map paper or $1.75 for it mounted on rollers (about $37–65 after inflation). The authors noted,\nThe number of copies of the Erie Plan sold is unknown. Considering the resignation of McCallum in 1857, and the failure of the Erie in 1857, the sales of a diagram of one of the greatest railroads in the world may have been disappointing, which may also be the reason for only one known copy existing today.\nViewing such a piece mounted on rollers would have been wonderful to see.\nIn 2013, their article was referenced in a sidebar of an article from McKinsey titled Big data in the age of the telegraph written by then Harvard-Newcomen postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Business School, now Berkeley Associate Professor Caitlin Rosenthal. In it she discusses McCallum’s diagram and its valuable lessons for leaders navigating large data landscapes. Some time between then and the writing of this post, it came across my radar and languished in the back of my mind ever since.\nWhen looking for a new project, I thought it would be something fun to explore, not knowing how much time I would spend researching its origins. The brief history above is only a portion of what’s available in the various publications I mentioned and all are worth a read. What follows is an account of my efforts to restore, recreate, and expand on the diagram using modern tools.\nThe most appealing part of recreating the diagram was drawing the beautiful curved branches and watching the tree they represent come to life. However, before I could do that, I had to figure out if the building blocks that made it so interesting were even possible—chief among them, typography, which could be broken down into four parts: title, legend, labels, and credits.\nA wide variety of typographical styles were used—ranging from simple and geometric for labels, to ornate in the title. I knew finding the right modern equivalents was going to be a challenge but one I would enjoy. My research started by messaging the talented team at Fonts In Use, a wonderful site created to “document and examine graphic design with the goal of improving typographic literacy and appreciation.” I learned about in 2023 when they posted about the typography used on the newest Metra tickets I acquired. I asked if they could identify any of the typography in the diagram and they confirmed my suspicions that all lettering was engraved by hand and not based on specific fonts.\nI briefly entertained the idea of making my own fonts but I knew what went into designing one and wasn’t ready to embark on such a lengthy journey for a few characters. Instead, I spent days sifting through the hundreds of fonts I collected over the years, libraries like Google Fonts and Adobe Fonts, and other font foundries to find ones that resembled those in the diagram as much as possible.\nThe full text of the diagram is “New York and Erie Railroad diagram representing a plan of organization: exhibiting the division of academic duties and showing the number and class of employés engaged in each department: from the returns of September 1855” and it comprised the most varied typographical collection with 11 fonts—a different one each line and 2 used on the last. Some elegant filigree also decorated the main parts of the title.\nFinding a modern equivalent for the first line, New York and Erie Railroad was a challenge because of its unique ornamental style. The three closest I could find were Hickory, Bruce Ornamented No. 881, and Dusty Circus Main. I chose the latter with some minor vertical stretching because it had roughly the same visual weight of the original. Normally, I loathe stretching a font but made some exceptions with this and a few other areas on the poster to meet space limitations.\nThe second line, Diagram, was written in old English style and while many fonts in that style are available, the three closest I could find were English Towne, Olde English, and Same Old English JNL. The title had the added feature of thin horizontal lines in the middle for shading and a kind of shadow on the upper right of each character. English Towne was the closest but didn’t have the shading lines. To achieve these effects, I created four separate layers:\nRepresenting a Plan was another combination of several layers offset to give the appearance of text elevated off the background. The two closest fonts I found were Noto Serif and Libre Bodoni—both freely available from Google Fonts. The thicker serifs on Noto Serif looked best.\nThe two smallest words—of and and—appeared to be the same style and the closest match I found was Bodoni Moda. I chose the bold italic style even though the original wasn’t italicized to achieve the more decorative “f” like the original.\nOrganization was another word written in an ornamental style and the two closest matches I could find were Rosewood and Alta Mesa Regular. Rosewood was too top heavy with shading and had shadows that were too deep while the latter was the closest match.\nLike with of and and, Bodoni Moda was also used for the text, Exhibiting the division of administrative duties, but with a little vertical stretching. Oranienbaum and Times NR Condensed were considered because of their condensed nature, but Bodoni Moda had more appropriate contrast between its horizontal and vertical strokes.\nTwo fonts immediately came to mind for the text, Showing the number and class of employés: DIN Condensed and Barlow Semi Condensed. I’ve had the DIN family installed for many years and often consider it for text in all caps due and used Barlow in a separate professional project in recent years. DIN Condensed had the closest fit.\nThe typography for Engaged in each department presented an interesting challenge because its text was italicized but leaning to the left, instead of the right, which is the norm. In my research, I learned this type of “reversed italic” text is also called retalic text. It also looked like a form of script, which made finding a match extra challenging. Initially, I couldn’t find any fonts that supported left-leaning text and I didn’t want to manually skew the text because the results would look subpar at best, so I tried to find fonts with italic styles that matched the original diagram. The few I found were Imperial Script, MonteCarlo, Inglesa Variable, and Great Vibes, but none sat well with me. Fortunately, after digging thro", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/making-of-the-new-york-and-erie-railroad-organizational-diagram", "canonical_source": "https://www.c82.net/blog?id=98", "published_at": "2025-03-29 14:53:38+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-05-24 00:06:52.222604+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["research", "products"], "entities": ["New York and Erie Railroad", "Daniel McCallum", "George Holt Henshaw", "Library of Congress", "President Lincoln", "United States Military Railroads"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/making-of-the-new-york-and-erie-railroad-organizational-diagram", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/making-of-the-new-york-and-erie-railroad-organizational-diagram.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/making-of-the-new-york-and-erie-railroad-organizational-diagram.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/making-of-the-new-york-and-erie-railroad-organizational-diagram.jsonld"}}