John Alexander Brodie was born on the 1st of June 1858 in Bridgnorth, Shropshire but began his professional career in 1875 working in the engineering department of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board under Chief engineer George Fosbery Lyster. Following this he set up a private consultancy and spent some time working in Spain. It would be in 1889 that he made the invention of which he said he was most proud. Attending a football match at Anfield, ( this was still Everton's ground at the time ) between Everton and Accrington Stanley, a wrongly disallowed goal in this hard fought game that cost his beloved Everton victory inspired John to submit a patent in November of that year for goal nets for football and other games. He returned to Liverpool in 1898 as the Liverpool city engineer and, due to his achievements, was the first local authority engineer to be made President of the Institution of Civil Engineers. In this position he was responsible for a swathe of landmark projects that would shape his home city.
He proposed the development and design of the UK's first ring road, Queens Drive, as he had a vision of a 'circumferential boulevard' extending around the outside of the city from Walton to Mossley Hill, with carriageways, pavements and electric tram tracks. Although the central reserve in Queen’s Drive was designed to take tram tracks these were never installed and trams never actually ran along there. This scheme was supplemented by improved radial roads and tramways such as Menlove and Mather Avenues. The unprecedentedly wide roads were constructed as far as possible on agricultural land which could be acquired at low cost and roads such as Black Horse Lane in Old Swan were also diverted or straightened and widened in the 1920s and 1930s. At the time the suburban sprawl of West Derby, Tuebrook and Childwall were not yet established, but even today Queens Drive holds up well with the volume of traffic which couldn't have been foreseen 90 years ago.
If being responsible for one of Liverpool’s major thoroughfares wasn’t enough, he also put forward the idea for the East Lancs Road, so that we could more quickly get to neighbouring Manchester.
He was a pioneer in promoting pre-fabricated housing technology using pre-cast concrete slabs with the first experimental houses being built in Eldon Street in 1903. Experimenting with concrete as a solution to the housing shortage, in 1905 he exhibited a pre-fab cottage at the Cheap Cottages Exhibition in Letchworth and the design attracted attention from across the world. John was also interested in town planning and this was recognised in 1912 when he was asked to help select the site and plan of New Delhi. He visited India twice for this purpose and in 1931 was invited to the official opening ceremony by the Viceroy owing to the high regard that Edwin Lutyens, the chief planner had for him. He served as president of the Institution of Civil Engineers between 1920 and 1921, becoming the first local authority engineer to receive the accolade. He was also an Associate Professor of Engineering at Liverpool University and vice-president of the Liverpool Self-Propelled Traffic Association which would later become a constituent of the Royal Automobile Club (RAC).
But his greatest engineering achievement was undoubtedly the Mersey Tunnel which was completed in 1934 after nine years in the making. At the time of its construction it was the world's longest underwater road tunnel, a title it held for 24 years, and remains to this day the UK's largest municipal engineering project. The tunnel was initially designed to accommodate a tramway which would have run in the lower half of the tube, under the current roadway, but this never materialised.
Following his death at his home, Aigburth Peoples Hall, Aigburth Vale in 1934, he was buried at Anfield Cemetery and Liverpool City Council duly named Brodie Avenue in his honour. His former Liverpool home, 28 Ullet Road, where he lived from 1858 to 1934 is commemorated with an English Heritage Blue Plaque.
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