Martin S. Kapp

Martin Kapp spent his entire professional career of 25 years in the service of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. He became the head of the Soils Division and later served as the Chief Engineer from 1970-1972.

This was an exciting and heady era of building activity at the Port Authority, with many large projects involving either heavy foundation construction or extensive land reclamation. These projects were typically located on marginal land that was underlain by complex deposits of glacial soils. Finding economic design solutions for these difficult ground conditions presented unusual challenges and major responsibilities. Marty relished these challenges and saw them as opportunities for the development of new methods and technology. He was responsible for the development or implementation of many new ideas.

Martin Kapp at the World Trade Center site during construction of the slurry wall.

He pioneered the use of the sand drain and surcharge method for subsurface stabilization and extended this technique to include the use of groundwater dewatering to affect a surcharge loading. In 1958, he won the Alfred A. Raymond award for the development and application of this concept.

But undoubtedly his most notable engineering accomplishment was the use of the slurry trench technique for the construction of a 65-foot deep foundation wall for the World Trade Center. This was the first major structural slurry wall in the United States and ranked as one of the largest slurry walls in the world. For this accomplishment, he received the A.P. Greensfelder Construction Prize in 1970.

Martin Kapp passed away on September 11, 1972, seven months before the dedication ceremonies for the World Trade Center.

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