Lost Bridge of the Week-- February 29th

Chestnut Street Bridge

Spanning the Schuylkill River at Chestnut Street

Could have called it Spiderman Bridge

                         And now... time to present a Wonder of the Motherfucking World, the Chestnut Street Bridge. This cast iron motherfucker was a point of pride for Philadelphians, Pennsylvanians, Americans... actually it was a point of pride for all humans. This Triumphant Truss of Terror was one of Phillly's greatest treasures that we'll NEVER get back.
                         This beast was so cool-looking that it gave reason for people to walk down the Schuylkill Banks before they ever had a trail or a highway running along them. The motherfucker took nine years of preparation and five years to build.
                         It all started in 1852. The only bridges across the Schuykill that were any damn good were at Market Street and Spring Garden Street. Every other one was either a shitbag pontoon bridge or some crappy covered bridge that would get washed away in any bad storm. The two real bridges were getting to be over-run with traffic. On March 27th of that year, and act passed stating that there should be bridges built at Callowhill and Chestnut Streets, the streets next to the current bridges, to alleviate some of that shitty traffic.
                        Enter all-around badass Strickland Kneass, the city's chief engineer. He came up with an idea for a bridge at Chestnut Street that would blow the fucking socks off any other in the WORLD. While people once loved the high-tech offerings of the Wire Bridge at Fairmount, its day was over. A new bridge would be needed to impress engineering ninjas everywhere. Once Kneass presented his plan in 1857 (after at least two more Acts demanding it were passed), people went apeshit over everything about it.. except for the cost. Half a million bones.
                         In the 1850's, half a million dollars was like saying a billion bajillion dollars today. After three years, some money was thrown in by local railroad interests so the thing could just get built already. Construction began in 1860.
                         Then, right as preparations for the construction began, the city's Master Warden, Charles S. Wayne, said "Fuck you, Kneass! This is my river!! You're not putting coffer dams in the middle of it, you dirty bastard!!", and sued the fuck out of the city. His case was dismissed the day it went to trial. Ends up that the Master Warden's jurisdiction ends at the shoreline. The dumbass Chief Warden almost stopped this project from ever happening. After five long years of construction, the bridge finally opened on June 23rd, 1866... and it wasn't even really done yet.
                

                    The huge arch-shaped ribs spanning halfway across the bridge came in sets of eight and were 185 feet long each. It was figured that the heaviest load that could ever cross the bridge would only have 1/28th the weight to break an individual rib. The cast iron flexed a whole 2 and 5/16th inches. You could roll a fucking tank over this thing! Also, this beautiful bridge (briefly) had a deck of square granite blocks that must have looked pretty fucking cool.
                    Once open, this became THE way across the Schuylkill.  Philadelphia's newest bridge became the envy of the world and was referred to as a great specimen of design and engineering. As the decades passed, the bridge stayed in continuous use with very little maintenance. In 1911, the approaches to be bridge were widened to support the shitload of people that were all about crossing this bridge, despite the fact that newer alternate bridges had been built up and down the river by this point.
                    In 1956, ninety years after the bridge opened, a proposal to take it down and replace it with a  FUCKING HIGHWAY OVERPASS-looking piece of dogshit was floated around. Ends up the western abutment was standing in the way of progress.

From this...

to THIS. What a travesty.

                 Kneass' beautiful Chestnut Street Bridge got its ass destroyed in 1958, replaced with the piece of shit that's still crumbling there today. The next time you cross the Chestnut Street Bridge and notice how boring it is and how shitty the condition its in, just remember that the same piers once held up a magnificent crossing that was hailed by the motherfucking world.

Look at that shit... and you can see this week's Mystery Building on the left!

Here's the bridge at age 89. Just a reminder of when shit looked good.

                      On another note, I must announce that this will be the last Lost Bridge article. Get set to see a new category coming to every other Wednesday here on Philaphilia! 

                                                          -GroJLart, King of Philadelphia and France

Lost Bridge of the Week-- February 15th

Second Street Bridge "into the country about the Society Hill"

Spanning Little Dock Creek at approximately 314 South Second Street

The only picture of it is a close-up of a conjectural engraving of a conjectural drawing.

                       This little flash-in-the-pan of a bridge used to span Little Dock Creek. Little Dock Creek was a small tributary of Dock Creek that ran south down to a pond at what is now 9th and South Streets. Why talk about this little shitbird of a bridge? It was famous in its own time for what you could see when standing on it.
                      In the late 1700's, mega-bankerfinancier Stephen Girard had a problem. He had purchased a site on what is now the 300 block of South Second Street and wanted to build a row of houses... this was considered prime real estate because the best water pump in town was right nearby. Also, fruit trees and vegetable plants grew mysterious high and bountiful here. When the foundations were dug, a shitload of water and mud exploded out of the ground and stopped the whole operation.
                     This caused curiosity about what was going on under 178 S. 2nd St (now 314). Old people in the neighborhood started to recount tales about a natural spring that ran out of a hill just west of the old Second Street bridge. Back in the early 1700's, a small bridge, only half the width of the street, spanned Little Dock Creek and a little pond just to the West. From the bridge, one could get a nice view of the pond, which was known as Bathsheba's Spring and Bower or Bathsheba's Baths.

Conjectural-ass illustration of the view of the spring from the Second Street Bridge

                      One would think that the spring was named after the biblical Bathsheba, whose story is bath-related, but NO. The spring was named after a Swedish settler named Bathsheba Bower, an old spinster who loved the spring so much that she built a small house right next to it and maintained a small lounge for visitors there.
                     The spring became a local landmark. People started arranging the hill nearby into a little amphitheater that surrounded it and local religious leaders started preaching from the balcony of a building across the street. Some time in the mid-1700's, Little Dock Creek was tunneled over and the Second Street Bridge was gone (another Second Street Bridge just south of Walnut still stood for a while longer).
                     Eventually, future Brigadier General John Cadwalader took down the hill and built a double-wide rowhome there. The pond of the spring got filled in and Bathsheba's Baths became forgotten. It wasn't until decades later when Girard needed to drive pilings for the houses he built (that are still standing, BTW) that memories of the spring sprang forth again. The water pump nearby still drew from the spring until the late 19th Century.
                    Whomever lives at 314 S. 2nd Street needs to do some digging and find out if that spring is still under there somewhere. Philadelphia has a goddamn natural spring.

Bathsheba's Spring and Bower is somewhere under here. Image from Google.

Lost Bridge of the Week-- February 1st

Callowhill Street Bridge (aka Fairmount Bridge, aka Spring Garden Street Bridge)

Spanning the Schuylkill River at Callowhill and Spring Garden Streets

1890. That's a nice looking bridge right there.

                     This bridge was built to make all previous Schuylkill River bridges look like dead racoon's ass. This beast was designed to be the most badass bridge that people had ever seen, and for awhile, lived up to that requirement.          
                     With the super-awesome Centennial Exhibition approaching, Philadelphia needed cool new shit to show off for the multitude of guests from around the world that would be visiting the city. The iconic Wire Bridge at Fairmount was getting old at this point and the retro look was definitely not in. The Centennial Exhibition was about innovation and the future. Let the shitty-ass Sesquicentennial Exhibition be about the past.
               They took down the kick-ass Wire Bridge at Fairmount and contracted famous bridge engineer J. H. Linville and the Keystone Bridge Company to design a super kickasstastic mega bridge that would stand out as the finest and most high-tech in the union. Linville pulled out all the stops and designed a double-decked rail and pedestrian bridge that connected Callowhill Street AND Spring Garden Street on either side of the river. It would be 48 feet wide, running 1,254 feet, (350 over the river) with 2,730 foot approaches on either side.
                The approaches were designed by Strickland Kneass and pissed Linville the fuck off. Linville didn't want the bridge to have decorated arches because then it would look way too cool, but Kneass went ahead and made the approaches all arched, so Linville was forced to continue the arches through the bridge structure. Just to be an asshole, he created a Whipple Truss wrought iron superstructure and tacked some non-weightbearing cast iron arches along the sides.
                    Construction began in 1874 and the bridge opened in 1875. The pricetag? 1.2 million dollars... a ridiculously high amount for the time.

Under construction.

                       Once complete, people loved this fucking thing. The railroad ran on the upper deck and carriages/pedestrians ran on the lower. Tourist guides from the era actually encouraged visitors to get off their trains, walk across the lower deck, and reboard the train on the other side.

Approach to the lower level. They sure don't make 'em like this anymore.

                The wrought iron framework and the cast iron arches were extremely vulnerable to rust. The bridge rusted right up shortly after it was built. The motherfucker was turning orange and by 1885, big-ass chunks of rust were falling from the upper deck to the lower deck. It got so bad that they had to employ motherfuckers who would clean off the fallen chunks.
                By 1900, people had enough of this shit. The cast iron arches on the bridge were removed and a new metal framework was built for the approaches. For the rest of its existence, the bridge would expose its less-exciting wrought iron Whipple Trusses.

1904 view of De-Arched Callowhill Street Bridge

           By 1917, everyone forgot about the grandeur of the original bridge. They even forgot its name... they started calling it the Spring Garden Bridge instead. Talk of widening or rebuilding the bridge began at about this time, but never happened.

The Lower Deck in 1954.

                  The span stayed in continuous use until Interstate 76 was built and started to get in the way of the lower deck. In the mid 60's, a plan to add a Spring Garden Street exit from the highway was created, and the old girl wasn't up to the task of having that kind of connection. In 1964, the 89 year old bridge was lowered onto a barge and hauled away. A plaque commemorating this bridge is present on the new one, but the illustration on it shows the crappy Whipple Truss version.
                   This bridge shows how something that was cool as fuck in 1875 could be considered a piece of shit only 20-some years later. The next time you go over the modern highway-ramp style version of this bridge, make sure to piss out the window in honor of its great predecessor.

1960 skyline view from the last years of the Callowhill Street Bridge.

               

Lost Bridge of the Week-- January 18th

Penrose Ferry Bridge III

Spanning the Schuylkill at Penrose Avenue

Looking awesome with its draw open in 1880. 

                     This right here is a crossing that never gets any damn respect. Penrose Avenue is one of the oldest spots to cross the Schuylkill but no one gives a shit now and no one gave a shit back in the day, either. While every other Schuylkill crossing has been analyzed and painstakingly historically recorded over the centuries, this one barely gets a mention anywhere.
                      This spot became a nameless ferry crossing in the early 18th Century. By the end of the 1700's, the area got officially named "Penrose Ferry" after the ferryman who worked it the most, Samuel Penrose. In the early 1800's, a rope was suspended over the river that helped ferrymen push and pull small skiffs across for a nominal fee. When a ship needed to pass, they just dropped the rope into the water. Everyone forgot about Penrose at this point and just called the spot "Rope Ferry".
                     As the city continued to grow, talks began about building a Rope Ferry Bridge. This would be a railroad crossing for all points south and west of the city. Matthew Newkirk, businessmonger and bridge benefactor, decided that idea sucked and made the train line cross at Gray's Ferry instead. It was not until April 7th, 1853 that the state legislature approved a bridge at Penrose Avenue. The new bridge got mired in legal battles because it was only going to clear the river by 6 feet and multiple shipping interests sued. Once the bridge finally got built, a flood washed it away in less than a year.
                    Penrose Ferry Bridge II opened on June 30th, 1860. It didn't last very long either... on July 7th, 1876, the center deck of the bridge fell right into the river. The great Centennial Exhibition was going on in the city at the time and the incident was a source of massive embarrassment.
                   Finally, in 1878, a bridge that would actually last awhile was built. Penrose Ferry Bridge III was a 416 foot long iron truss bridge with a rotating pivot pier, which allowed the center section to open and create two 183 foot wide passages. The photo at the top of the article shows the bridge when the draw is open... and as you can see, looks pretty fucking awesome.
                  Unfortunately, it didn't look awesome for very long. In 1900, the whole bridge was reconstructed...the iron trusses were replaced with a network of steel. Though technically the same bridge, it  looked very different (and boring).

From 1910. Boooooring.

                       The bridge actually had this shitty look for most of its life...it lasted all the way up until 1949, when the humongous George C. Platt Bridge replaced it. That bridge is currently only 9 years younger than the Penrose Ferry Bridge III was when it was demolished. In 1931, well before the Platt Bridge was thought of, funds were appropriated and plans were drawn for a Penrose Tunnel that would go under the Schuylkill to quickly bring cars to the planned "Municipal Airport" (now Philly International) that was on the drawing boards at the time. The funding and plans for that project were transferred to a different tunnel planned to cross under the Delaware that was never built.
                       This bridge lasted 71 years but no one seems to remember a damn thing about it, other than how much of an uproar occurred when it was closed for reconstruction in 1900. Apparently the construction of the new approaches took forever and was fucking up some farmer's lands on either side. Other than that, there's not much else recorded about what went on with this bridge. What a shame.

Pic of the site of the bridge after it was removed. You can see the construction of the Platt Bridge in the background.

Lost Bridge of the Week-- January 4th

Newkirk Viaduct

Crossing the Schuylkill at Grays Ferry Avenue

No one ever covers bridges anymore.

                        This thing was crazy... a covered multi-modal bridge 800 feet long from 1838. They called it the Newkirk Viaduct, but most people just called it what the span in the same spot is called today: the Grays Ferry Bridge. In the mid 19th century, if you wanted to travel to all points south of Philly, you had to do it over this motherfucker.
                       It began in 1831. At that time, there was no way to take a train between Philadelphia and anywhere west of the Schuykill and it was becoming a problem. The Philadelphia and Delaware Railroad Company formed in that year with the intention of building a route straight down to the Delaware state line. They got some badass engineers on the case, Samuel Kneass and William Strickland. By the time 1835 rolled around, the line was surveyed and plotted. They wanted the train to cross the mighty Schuylkill at Rope Ferry (which was exactly what it sounds like), currently called Penrose Avenue.

                      Even though the company was chartered in 1831, they didn't have a president until 1836, and that was Matthew Newkirk. This guy was a badass all around town and was pissed off at how much this thing was going to cost and where it was plotted. He suggested that it cross the river at Gray's Ferry and had Kneass re-plan the line accordingly. Then he appealed for a bigger budget to get this fucker done already. The result was the re-naming of the crew to the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad Company.  

                     PWB bought the shitbag floating pontoon bridge that people called the Gray's Ferry Bridge at the time and destroyed the fuck out of it on December 31st, 1836. Then they got Kneass and Strickland to design an 800-foot-long covered bridge with two roads: one for carriages and one for trains. Construction began in July of 1837 and opened on Christmas, 1838. 

                     Newkirk was so fucking proud that not only did he give the bridge his name, he built a 30 foot tall monument to himself in marble on the western end of the bridge. 

Drawing of it from 1856.

                       Even more fucking nuts than that is that its still standing at the old western terminus of the bridge, next to the current Septa tracks under the north side of the 49th Street bridge, 174 fucking years later.

As seen in 2009. Pic by Bruce Andersen.

                     The fun thing about the Newkirk Viaduct is that when bad shit occurred and it was destroyed, it was just rebuilt like nothing happened. Only 2 years after opening, it was carried away in a bad flood. The motherfucker was back in action shortly after. It burned the fuck down in 1863 only to be completely rebuilt almost immediately. The 67-foot draw section of the bridge was replaced numerous times, the first being only a year after the bridge opened.

                     After 62 years of rebuilds and alterations, the Newkirk Viaduct was finally put out of its misery in 1900. Rumor has it that some pieces of the approaches to the 1902 railroad bridge that is permanently sitting switched open on the river are remnants of the old Newkirk Viaduct. Who knows? Either way, this bridge was an important link that was the only way to get south of Philly on a train to get your ass blown off in the Civil War. That's something.

Lost Bridge of the Week-- December 21st

Walnut Street Bridge I

Spanning the Schuylkill River at Walnut Street between 24th and 33rd Streets

Twas a cool bridge.

                               Here's an old bridge that doesn't look much different from its replacement. This old girl was yet another bridge over the Schuylkill that proved to be a huge pain in the ass to design and build, but the hard work ended up paying off handsomely.

                             In 1888, the demands of Philly's quickly growing population got the best of it. The bridges that existed over the Schuylkill, though built only a few decades before, were already overcrowded. On Christmas Eve of that year, City Council voted a on a new bridge, this time at Walnut Street. The engineering challenge this presented was the least of their worries. 

                            The Schuylkill River is decidedly deep in this particular spot and the bedrock was 48 feet under the muddy bottom. A shitload of train lines already existed on each side of the river and would need to be spanned. This would require the bridge's length to be 3,448 feet, only 369 feet of which went over the river.  On the Center City side, Walnut Street would have to be widened to accommodate the 60-foot-wide bridge deck. Despite all those challenges, construction was slated to begin on July 1, 1889. 

                            Of course, this is Philadelphia and construction did not begin that day. There was a shortage of stone from the quarries and the bridges initial construction steps were delayed. Such delays plagued the project. Some work started on July 16th so that is considered the official construction start time. 

They were still throwing down coffer dams a year and a half after construction started.

"I swear, we'll finish this thing some time!"

                          The design for the primary section of bridge would be wrought iron that extended 2,408 feet over piers 123 feet apart. All this would be covered with a long plate of concrete with beautiful decorative ironwork railings that no bridge built today is capable of having. 

Look at that shit.

                    The bridge opened on July 16th, 1893, precisely four years from the first day of construction. Amazingly, it came in under its $900,000 budget at $751,921.68  For a bridge that was hastily designed and had so many construction delays, it KICKED ASS. It stayed in continuous use with very little maintenance for 7 whole decades. It wasn't until 1974 that the bridge was closed for repairs. 

                      By the 1980's, the bridge was breaking all kinds of Highway Safety Regulations that didn't previously exist. The beautiful railings were a major concern because those things weren't going to hold back a tractor trailer. Shit, by this point, anyone could probably just kick straight through them. 

The iron railings in 1973.

                 In 1988, the destruction of this first Walnut Street Bridge began... except this is a case where you can really say the new bridge is also the old bridge. PennDOT spent $28 million replacing the bridge one lane at a time. This is probably the reason the current bridge is so similar to the old... it uses the same piers. I guess this bridge is not as lost as we thought.
                 The Philly Inquirer article about the reconstruction/demolition/replacement of the bridge from 1988 states that the iron railings from the old bridge would be donated to the Fairmount Park Association and be used for decoration of the Schuylkill River Banks Park. Well 23 years later that park is looking pretty nice but where are the railings? Where did they end up?

Lost Bridge of the Week-- December 7th

Girard Avenue Bridge I

Spanning the Schuylkill at Girard Avenue

That's one hell of a bridge.

                      Sometimes a bridge can be really nice looking but turn out to be completely useless. This is one of those bridges. It was one of the most important arteries over the Schuylkill in its time, but managed to be so fucked up that it was demolished in less than 20 years. Talk about a shitty bridge.
                    In 1852, City Council argued about the need for free bridges over the Schuylkill. The current bridges were crowded as fuck and became more of a burden than a benefit. On March 27th, 1852, the Council passed "An Act to Authorize the Erection of Free Bridges over the Schuylkill", initiating the creation of both a Girard Avenue and Chestnut Street Bridge. The cost was not to exceed $175,000 for each one.
                    For the design, the city went with the German-educated Philly resident engineer Rudolph Hering. He designed a triple-spanned bridge that obviously went further for style points than functionality. The builder was Aldophus Bonanzo, and he took his goddamn time. Construction began in early 1853 and was taking forever. In the middle of 1854, Council complained about how the bridge was taking too long to build and how the Chestnut Bridge hadn't even started yet.
                     They shouldn't have been so surprised. Other Schuylkill River bridges that had been authorized in earlier decades (especially one that was planned at Arch Street numerous times) never materialized. The bridge finished construction in 1855 and that Chestnut Bridge didn't even start until 1857. The Girard Avenue Bridge came in waaay overbudget at $267,000.

Painting of the bridge by Thomas Eakins. It's the one behind that railroad bridge.

                       As the bridge came into use, people figured out pretty quickly that it sucked. It was too thin and way more people were using it at any given time than it was designed for. Trolleys started running over it in 1859, the same trolley line that exists as the Route 15 Trolley today. By 1871, the bridge was literally falling apart. It was in desperate need of repair but interests that used the river didn't want it blocked for the construction, namely the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company. They sued the city in that year for not stopping the repair and lost.
                      Despite the repairs in 1871, the bridge was all fucked up again a year later. With the Centennial coming up, the city just said "fuck it" and destroyed the bridge in 1872. The bridge that would be built to replace it was the widest in the world and lasted nearly a century.
                     Even though he was a shitty-ass engineer, Hering went on to become very well-known later in life due to his involvement with the reversing of the Chicago River. There's awards and metals and shit named after him now. Not bad for a fuck-up.

Lost Bridge of the Week-- November 9th

The Great Arch

Crossing over Mulberry (Arch) Street at Front Street

Not impressed? If this was 1690 you'd be eating your own ass out with excitement over this thing!

                       Sometimes a bridge is so badass that an entire long-ass street gets named after it FOREVER. This is that bridge... the reason we call Arch Street "Arch Street" and not "Fucktograph Lane". The drawing above is conjectural, of course. The real bridge was probably much thinner.
                     Back in the primordial village/city of Philadelphia of the 17th Century, it was a pain in the ass to walk/ride up Front Street because there was this massive dip in it right at the corner of Mulberry Street. In 1690, some guys named Benjamin Chambers, Thomas Pearl, and Francis Rawle presented a petition to build a massive stone arch there so that travelers on Front Street could just walk over Mulberry instead. The little dinky 66-foot long pile of stones that ended up being built was the most high-tech piece of engineering in Colonial Proto-America.
                     The first written record of the bridge after it was built was written in 1698. In it, some dude named Gabriel Thomas describes how people often carted shit off huge ships docked at the Mulberry Street Wharf and brought the stuff down Mulberry Street under a huge arch. In 1704, there's an account of the city/village coming down on some dickhead for blocking the underside of the arch with his lumber.
                     The arch was apparently a piece of shit that didn't last very long because in the same year, plans were discussed on how to repair it. The whole next decade, accounts about how dangerous the arch was for "man and beast" pop up just about every year. It wasn't until 1712 that the arch had fences on either side to prevent people from falling off.  By 1713 the underside of the arch was becoming all fucked up and by 1718 the bridge itself was considered "impassible". In 1720, the arch had become a public nuisance and probably one of the city's first major pieces of blight. It was finally pulled down in 1721.
                    In April 1723, orders came down the line to level out Front Street so that it would meet Mulberry at the corner and there wouldn't be a dip there anymore. In 1727, Six years after the arch was completely removed, the first written account referring to Mulberry as Arch Street appears. Somehow, people loved this dangerous-ass pile of rocks so much that the street going under it carries that name to this day. That shit's fucked up, yo. Mulberry Street was officially renamed Arch Street in 1853.
                    Buildings that showed evidence of the previous height of Front Street stood long afterward, and became the clue that later historians used to start researching the ravings of old people that claimed that there used to be an arch over Arch Street. The site of the Great Arch is half covered with I-95 South, but if you go there you will see how Front Street gradually dips down to meet Mulberry... err... Arch Street.

Yay.

Lost Bridge of the Week-- October 26th

Chestnut Street Bridge I

Crossing Dock Creek at Chestnut Street near Hudson's Alley

VERY lost bridge of the week. This engraving is somewhat inaccurate, but the house in the picture was the main focus of the original drawing, which was done by William Strickland 119 years after the bridge was built.

                           Now it's time to talk about Old Philadelphia, like village-sized primordial Philadelphia from the early early days. Dock Creek, that once ran through what is now Old City, was spanned by many little crappy bridges all around Penn's Green Country Towne of old. This was one of them. This bridge is so ancient that when it was installed, Chestnut beyond third street was the fucking edge of town.
                            It started in an unknown year in the late 1600's. Chestnut Street had a dip in it that would get filled with the water from Dock Creek for some parts of the year and be an impassable muddy hole the rest of the year. A rudimentary wooden bridge was built that did not last very long. In 1699, the city (village) of Philadelphia commissioned a stone arch bridge that would span the trench.
                            Money ran out before the protective sides of the stone bridge could be built, so the span was just a stone arch with a flat top that proved to be extremely dangerous. A man named John Reynalls lost his daughter to drowning after falling off the span. The Governor of Barbados, who rented the house in that engraving, wouldn't even use the bridge.
                          The first written account of the ancient Chestnut Street Bridge was from February 7th, 1719 and is all about how it was precarious as fuck to cross and how it needed to be repaired. Folks who lived nearby would build makeshift wooden railings for the bridge, but these would often end up falling down. Later in 1719, another account talks about how it had partially collapsed.
                         The bridge went through repair after repair until 1750. In that year, the Chestnut Street Bridge had deteriorated to the point of impassibility. The arch had completely collapsed at this point and the creek would overrun the bridge/pile of rocks in certain parts of the year. Only seven years later, the creek was filled and the bridge was forgotten.
                         Very forgotten. By the early 1800's, the existence of this bridge was completely unknown, save the ravings of the few people that managed to live long enough to remember it. A 75-year-old man named Arthur Howell told tales in 1822 about how his father told him that the family home was built over the site of the old Dock Creek that was next to the old Chestnut Street Bridge. It wasn't until one year later, when the first water pipes were being laid under Chestnut Street, that the oak pilings of the old bridge were discovered to the surprise of the entire city. It was like finding Bigfoot!
                         This bridge seems so simple to us now.. a pile of rocks in the form of an arch spanning only a small gap... but in 1699 protoamerica, this was THE SHIT. No matter how many crossings that would later be called the Chestnut Street Bridge, this was the first.

You can see the Chestnut Street Bridge in the upper middle of this conjectural engraving.

Lost Bridge of the Week-- October 12th

South Street Bridge I

Crossing the Schuylkill at South Street

 

                This was the first South Street Bridge. A wrought iron cage with a rotating draw-section in the middle, all supported by iron cylinders filled with masonry. Though it doesn't look like much today,  the scandal and saga associated with this bridge being built makes the controversy over the new South Street Bridge seem like child's play. All the bitching and moaning people did about the new one is nothing compared to the crap that went on about this beast.

                    In the late 1860's, the need for yet another bridge over the Schuylkill arose. Say you wanted to go to the Blockley Almshouse from Center City. You would have to haul your ass up to Walnut Street, wait in a long line of horse carriages and shit, cross over, then trudge your ass down some unsidewalked mud and horseshit filled road over to the almshouse. A bridge at South Street would make that trip a lot quicker.

                 A bridge in this spot presented some challenges. Not only do you need to cross a river, you also need to cross over a shitload of train tracks that were laid on either side of it. The full length of the bridge would have to be 1,934 feet and seven inches. Back then, that might as well be 5,000 miles. On top of that, an assload of huge ships would come down the Schuylkill all the time... you either had to make the bridge really tall or put a draw-section into it.

                 Mega-badass engineer John W. Murphy took on the physical challenge. He had already made a career of designing all kinds of bridges over seemingly impossible areas, and conveniently, he lived in Philadelphia. This guy worshiped iron and knew everything about it. He was commissioned by the city on March 30th, 1870 and construction began in 1872. 

                 His design was the shit. For the piers, he stacked a bunch of 10 foot long and eight foot wide cylinders on top of each other. Each small section weighed 14,600 pounds. Then he filled them all with a shitload of rocks and brick. This would have no problem holding up the comparatively light bridge deck. Then he put a gigantic pier in the middle that was capable of rotating while holding up to 400 tons. This was how ships would get by. The pivoting pier bumped the budget up to $865,000. Series of stone arches held the bridge up over the train tracks on either side.

                  Having a an experienced engineer on the job had advantages and disadvantages. The advantage was that this guy was able to design this complicated-ass iron monstrosity and pivoting draw bridge with his eyes closed. The disadvantage was that this guy was old as fuck. He ended up dying while the bridge was being built in 1874. This is when all the drama began. 

                The Phoenix Iron Company, the contractor supplying all the iron (actually they were just melting down old army cannons and reforming them), had made an agreement with Murphy to be paid for their iron as it was delivered, instead of taking a lump sum of cash from the beginning. Murphy had even gotten a letter from the City Controller authorizing the deal. After Murphy died, the city government, in their traditional corruptness, denied any such deal took place and refused to pay for any more iron. Phoenix therefore stopped delivering iron and the bridge sat half-built for years. 

                The lawsuit filed against the city by Phoenix ended up going all the way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court basically laughed at our corrupt-ass city government and awarded Phoenix their damn money, which the city had been conveniently hiding in a secret account. The Bridge's construction continued and was finally completed in 1876.

                  Shortly after construction, other problems arose. The iron piers started to crack up and had to be repaired with iron band-aids. On February 10th, 1878, the stone arches of the western approach, the section that went over train tracks, came crashing down. It was replaced by a wooden approach until an iron skeleton-built approach was constructed in December 1885. The crappily-constructed bridge lasted until 1921, only staying in operation for 45 years. 

The bridge in the last year of its life, with iron western approach replacement.

                This bridge, despite its many setbacks, is a lot better looking than the crappy highway overpass that is the new South Street Bridge. Not that this bridge would have been very useful today... it wasn't very wide... but at least someone was thinking about some style points for small bridges back then. A few bridges from this one's era still survive and are full of modern vehicular traffic... the Calhoun Street Bridge in Trenton is even built of iron from the same iron company.

Lost Bridge of the Week-- September 28th

The Colossus Bridge (aka the Upper Ferry Bridge, the Lancaster Schuylkill Bridge, aka the Fairmount Bridge, Schuylkill Arch Truss Bridge)

Spanning the Schuylkill River at Spring Garden Street.

                       This bridge makes last week's Lost Bridge look like a pile of assholes. While last week's was the first covered bridge in the country, this one was Philadelphia's first to hold the record of longest single span in the country... by 100 feet! Thought it had all kinds of proper and official names, most people called it The Colossus.
                   

Like this, but a bridge.

                         After the success of Palmer's Permanent Bridge at High (Market) Street, the desire to turn the other crappy pontoon bridges into massive wooden covered bridges arose. The call went out to engineers everywhere for designs. Thats when the German, Lewis Wernwag, showed up. He had just completed some nearby bridges over creeks that people thought kicked ass. Unlike the other engineering motherfuckers, Wernwag was all about the challenge of getting over the 340-foot gap with a single span.
                       Without the need to build stone piers in the middle of the river, his bridge design was not only the most high tech, but the cheapest to build. Construction began on April 28th, 1812. Wernwag spanned the river with 4 arches of wood that were 4' x 1' at the ends and 3' x 1' in the middle. The rest was a latticework of big-ass timber that was in turn covered over with decorative panels. 10 little windows were cut into each side. Iron wires moored the bridge to its stone anchors on either end.

This is how it looked under the cover.

                     When this was opened on January 7th, 1813, it was the longest single span bridge in America and second longest in the world. Since communication was ass at the time, Wernwag was convinced it was the world-record breaker. He must have walked around with a hard-on all day. "Don't mind this!", he would say. The bridge lost its title of longest in America in 1815, but got it back again when the bridge that beat it (the McCall's Ferry Bridge) burned the fuck down in 1818. It would hold the title for 20 more years.
                       Wernwag went on to become a bridge-building celebrity starchitect and designed a shitload of bridges for the remainder of his life. The Colossus burned down in 1838 and was replaced by Ellet's Wire Bridge at Fairmount. Ellet was such a cock that he re-used the stone anchors that were laid down by Wernwag.
                        As everyone who reads this probably already knows, the current bridges over the Schuylkill look like butt. They're all pretty much just highway causeways with a few decorative elements (that suck). Back when the Colossus was built, crossing the Schuylkill was not easy and people appreciated it a helluva lot more.  Hopefully the next time we replace one of the river bridges, we'll do a better job. Based on the assness of the new South Street Bridge, that's highly unlikely.

We sure as hell won't build one that looks this good again. Balls.

Lost Bridge of the Week-- September 14th

The Schuylkill Permanent Bridge

Schuylkill River at Market Street

Market Street at the Schuylkill. It was a long fucking time ago.

                   So it's the late 18th Century and you're in Philadelphia. If you wanted to leave the city and go east or west, you would have to take an expensive-ass crowded ferry or otherwise cross a floating pontoon bridge. If it was raining or windy, you were fucked. The need for a sturdy bridge over either the Delaware or Schuylkill existed since Philadelphia's founding.
                  In the 1780's, Thomas Paine (yes, THAT Thomas Paine) designed a iron bridge that would span the Schuylkill River at High (Market) Street. Back then that was like designing a bridge to Bermuda. The design never came to fruition, mostly because nobody had any idea of how the fuck they would put it together.
                In 1797, Charles Wilson Peale (yes, THAT Charles Wilson Peale) designed a wooden bridge for the same spot and got a patent on how it would be constructed. On April 27, 1798, Governor Mifflin incorporated a group of private investors that would fund a stone bridge across the river.
                They called in engineering badass William Weston, Esquire from England to design a stone bridge and figure out how the fuck to build the supporting piers for it. Weston was an engineering badass and designed a special kind of coffer dam to get this thing going.
                 Construction began in 1800 with a budget of $200,000. As the piers were being built, the investors figured out that a stone bridge would be too expensive and they would need to build it out of wood. Benjamin Latrobe submitted a plan for the new bridge design but it must have sucked because there's barely any record of it.
                Then came legendary badass Timothy Palmer. This guy was a self-taught architect and bridge designer. He was like "Fuck Thomas Paine, fuck Charles Wilson Peale, fuck Latrobe too. I have a design for a wooden bridge that will span the Schuylkill and make every other bridge look like a bitch." He called it the Permanent Bridge, because it was designed to last 30 years.
                 Once the stone piers were complete, the wooden frame designed by Palmer was begun. Judge Richard Peters, president of the dudes funding the bridge, had a great idea. They could cover the bridge frame and roadway with more wood and protect it from the elements. Maybe the Permanent Bridge could survive for 40 years instead of 30! Palmer designed the cover with another architect, Owen Biddle. Sculptor William Rush decorated it with sculptures about commerce and agriculture and shit. Part of the bridge was painted with sand, stone, and plaster-infused paint so it would look like masonry.
                

Diagram showing the bridge frame and skin.

                     On January 1st, 1805, the 550-foot, way over-budget Schuylkill Permanent Bridge, the first covered bridge in America, opened. It instantly became a Philadelphia landmark. Tolls varied based on what you were driving across and how heavy it was. Rates ranged from 1 cent (for a single person walking) to $1.35 (for a six-ton load).
                 The bridge was a huge success, inspiring other wooden bridges to be built across the Schuylkill in Philadelphia and other cities along the river. Palmer went on to design a shitload of other covered bridges that dotted the nation. In 1850 to 51, the bridge was expanded to carry trains after most of it was destroyed by fire. Though it was built to last only 40 years, it managed to survive all the way from 1805 to November 20th, 1875, when it finally burned down.
                 An 1805 wooden bridge lasting 70 years? That's pretty fucking impressive. Though some consider the 1850 renovation an entirely new bridge, the piers that William Weston designed held it up. A plaque commemorating this bridge is on display at the current bridge at Market Street, which is officially called the Market Street Permanent Bridge. It's just one year younger than the 1805 one was when it was destroyed.

Look at that shit. Nice work.

Lost Bridge of the Week-- August 31st

Wire Bridge at Fairmount (aka Spring Garden Street Bridge, Ellet Suspension Bridge, aka Fairmount Bridge)

How fucking cool was this thing?

                       It's hard to believe that there was once a time when spanning over a river as thin as the Schuylkill was considered a great feat of engineering. This bridge is from that time. The Wire Bridge at Fairmount was the first wire suspension bridge in America. It all began with one of the greatest badasses of the 19th Century.
                      Charles Ellet was born and raised in Bucks County. He studied engineering in France (he was the first American to study engineering in Europe) and became obsessed with the then-futuristic idea of a large-scale suspension bridge (smaller suspension bridges were around back then but they sucked). When he finished school, he returned to America with the intention of getting a new-fangled large-scale suspension bridge built.
                  He first went to Washington, DC and proposed a suspension bridge over the Potomac. Back then that was like proposing a bridge to the International Space Station. He got laughed out of town. In 1841, however,  Ellet was commissioned by the City of Philadelphia to design a 398-foot pedestrian bridge that would cross the Schuylkill River from the Water Works to Bridge Street in West Philly (now Spring Garden Street), replacing the beat-up old wooden bridge that was currently there (that bridge in itself has a cool history).
                  Ellet had a crazy idea. He would design a suspension bridge that was held up by high-tension wires. This would allow a much longer and wider bridge than other early suspension bridges, which were held up by chains. It would be able to hold much more weight, which would help the bridge stay useful for a longer time. Ellet was the top engineer in the nation.. he knew that much heavier vehicles would one day be built.
                 People were gonna flip their shit once they saw this thing. The Wire Bridge at Fairmount opened on January 1st, 1842 to massive fanfare and the first ever New Year's parade in Philadelphia, a city that likes its New Year's parades. The bridge became an instant landmark.

It was a big fucking deal at the time.

                        The success of the Fairmount Bridge caused other cities to shit themselves and beg Ellet to build them suspension bridges in areas that were once considered impossible to cross. By 1848, Ellet was building the two longest bridges in the world and at the same time. American bridge-building began to surpass Europe and the age of the suspension bridge was born.          
                 Ellet was such a continuously-achieving 65th Level Badass that he ended up becoming a Civil War hero on top of all of his other accomplishments. He was commissioned by the Secretary of War (they didn't have pussy names like "Secretary of Defense back then, it was Secretary of WAR) to use his engineering prowess to convert common tugboats into war machines.

Ellet-Class Fuck You boat.

                       As an added bonus, he would be given the rank of Colonel and command one of the kill-boats! Ellet was actually pretty good at warring but ended up getting killed by wounds inflicted during the Battle of Memphis. He was such an incredibly huge dick-swinging engineer/colonel/father of suspension bridges that the U.S. Navy named a Destroyer after him in 1939 that saw a shitload of action during World War II.

U.S.S Ellet, DD-398. Do you have a Destroyer named after you? Didn't think so.

                   The Wire Bridge at Fairmount was already recognized at the most important bridge of it's time when it was demolished in 1874. It's ability to handle a large amount of weight kept it in service even after early trolleys became common. It would probably be able to handle a decent load of cars if it was still around today. One of Ellet's later bridges still stands and handles normal vehicular traffic.

The Fairmount Bridge in its final years.

                     The city wouldn't have another suspension bridge until the Ben Franklin Bridge in 1926. Another, the Walt Whitman bridge, would be built 24 years later. Are there any suspension bridges in Philly's future? Probably not for a long fucking time... the BFB and the Walt Whitman have a good 100 years left in 'em if they're properly maintained.
                    The only hope we have is an old Master Plan for the University of Pennsylvania from 2006. One of the renderings shows a cable-stay type suspension pedestrian bridge. If built, this would be the true successor to the Wire Bridge at Fairmount due to it's crossing of the same river and being in use for the same purpose (pedestrians). This plan is pretty much dead but if Penn had any balls they could make it happen. Do it, you fucks!

NOW!