Daniel L. Turner

The early ambition of Daniel Lawrence Turner was to be a portrait painter. The fact no doubt colored his life and made him a more imaginative engineer. A graduate of Rensselaer in the class of 1891, he taught for seven years at Harvard. During this time he was the director of the Harvard Engineering Camp at Squam Lake, N. H. He was a sympathetic director for a lot of healthy young men and an energetic and stimulating teacher. From the time he left Harvard he was constantly employed in work on New York subways. As a consultant he worked on rapid transit for Detroit and for the North Jersey Transit Commission. When working for the Rapid Transit Commission and the Board of Transportation he was always taking the long view and trying, not always successfully, to combat shortsighted expediency and to do for the whole city constructive planning of subways to open vacant land instead of keeping to old and congested routes. He believed in the great city and wanted to avoid the mistakes of the past in all the machinery of city living. Turner was not often at the Century because after his retirement in 1933 he divided his time between Nova Scotia and Florida. Spring and fall on the way through he stopped in New York and came to the Club every day. His hearty and often too strong handclasp was characteristic of his friendly nature.

Geoffrey Parsons
1942 Century Memorials