Santo Chain

Santangelo (Santo) Chain was an Italian-American New York municipal engineer. His name is probably an Ellis Island corruption of the Italian surname ‘Cena’. Born in the West Side of Manhattan on September 14th, 1928 to fervently religious parents, he grew up in an environment in which public service and personal piety were inseparable. Though he was sufficiently well-educated to be admitted, in 1946, to Brooklyn College as an undergraduate, after completing his studies he returned home to assist his parents with their lettings business and compassionate housing charity.

When both his parents died, barely five years later, from chest infections complicated by the polluted air of Manhattan, Chain sold the family business, investing the proceeds in the charity, and took a job working for the municipality, aiming to reduce delinquency by architectural modifications, as well as providing meaningful pastimes for the city’s growing youth population.

One of Chain’s innovations was the development of a series of basketball courts, taking over derelict sites across Manhattan. Initially it was decided that these should not be walled, in order to deter any covert criminal activity that could be concealed from police officers on foot. Rapidly, and following a spate of accidental window breakings that coincided with the opening of each court, pressure mounted to enclose the courts. Chain, loth to build solid walls for his original ideological reasons as well as the extraordinary cost in both materials and time, devised a system of interlinked galvanised wire supported on steel uprights that could be erected fifteen feet high with minimal effort and cost.

The patent was filed by Chain’s office as the Chain link-fence, alluding to the way in which the vertical wires of the fence connected with one another. Out of gratitude, the municipality handed the rights in their entirety to Chain, who in turn passed all proceeds directly into the charity established by his parents. By the time Chain died in 2010, his invention had become a ubiquitous feature of urban and rural landscapes internationally.