Visiting a piece of New Bedford, Massachusetts history just got a lot safer, due to efforts made by the New England District and its contractor.

The District and its contractor, Tantara Associates Corporation of Worcester, Massachusetts, completed the fabrication and installation of fall protection barricade railing at Fort Rodman in New Bedford. The barricade railing work falls under the Corps’ Defense Environmental Restoration Program for Formerly Used Defense Sites.

According to the Fort Taber/Fort Rodman Historical Association, Inc., Fort Rodman, formerly known as Fort Taber after the New Bedford mayor responsible for getting the structure built, was constructed during the Civil War to protect the port from enemy invasion. 

The granite walls at the fort were completed in 1863. In 1898, the fort and the surrounding military reservation was renamed after Lt. Col. William Logan Rodman of New Bedford who was killed during the Civil War. The last of six concrete batteries constructed, Battery Miliken, was completed in 1920. The fort was declared surplus in World War II but served as an Army Reserve Training area until the end of the Vietnam War.

Work consisted of fabricating and installing new steel barricade railing composed of galvanized solid steels posts, solid rails and solid balusters, with an overall height of approximately four feet. Additional work involved including minor grading and new ground cover material as well as clearing brush as needed to access the rail installation locations.

Tantara Associates Corporation, a woman-owned, small business contractor, also installed railing on the roof of the fort to create a panoramic viewing area of the park and Buzzard’s Bay. Challenges during the project included clearing heavy and thick vegetation at Battery Miliken and working with deteriorated concrete at the batteries that created unsafe conditions. In several instances some of the post locations for the barricade railing were designed to avoid unsound concrete and the project was successfully completed.

Work on the $524,732 project began in June 2014 and was completed the following December. After a final inspection conducted with New Bedford’s Park and Recreation and Planning Departments in January, the project was handed over to the city.

Dave Larsen was the Project Manager. Other team members involved in this project were: Susanne Grant, Project Engineer, Jim Morocco, Administrative Contracting Officer/Resident Engineer, Matt Tessier, Mark DeSouza, Jeff Gaeta, Kirk Bargerhuff and Marc Paiva of Engineering and Peg Lorenzo of Real Estate.