Spring Garden Street Bridge

At this historic Schuylkill River crossing, a ferry beginning about 1692 and six successive bridges preceded the current Spring Garden Street Bridge, constructed in 1966. A floating bridge here lasted from 1776 to 1798, when a flood destroyed it, and high water washed away its successor in 1809. The first permanent span opened in 1813 as a timber arch-covered structure designed by Lewis Wernwag, one of the nation’s earliest professional bridge builders. Known as the Colossus of Fairmount or the Upper Ferry Bridge, it was the longest single-arch bridge in the world before it burned in 1838. In 1842, Colonel Charles Ellet, Jr. replaced it with the Wire Bridge, the country’s first cable suspension bridge for vehicles, 357 feet long and only 18 feet wide, which remained in use until 1875. Jacob H. Linville then designed a double-deck truss bridge with an upper deck carrying Spring Garden Street and a lower deck for Callowhill Street; it lasted 90 years before obsolescence and deterioration required replacement. The present two-level structure, designed by Leopold Neiman, the city’s Chief Bridge Engineer, with Harbeson, Hough, Livingston and Larson, architects, rests on common piers. Its lower level, 740 feet long, links West River Drive to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, while its 440-foot upper level carries Spring Garden Street between the Parkway and West Philadelphia. Bethlehem Steel Corporation fabricated the welded box girders, a technique that allowed unusually long welded spans and gave the bridge a smooth, uninterrupted exterior. The lower level opened in December 1965 and the upper bridge in June 1966.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania · United States