The 1931 Anthony Wayne Bridge is an engineering work designed by Waddell and Hardesty and constructed for 2.6 million dollars by the McClintic-Marshall Company as the first U.S. bridge to use deep, riveted plate girder spans. Though called a suspension bridge for how it carries loads, its total length is 3,218 feet, and vertical steel ropes transfer the weight of the bridge and its traffic to long steel cables draped over two towers 201 feet high and attached to large concrete anchoring blocks on each shore. Its roadway rises 106 feet above the river so lake freighters can pass below, and its 60-foot-wide deck is supported by two main cables containing 3534 parallel steel wires each. In its early years, the bridge's name sparked heated political debate, with some favoring Warren Gamaliel Harding Memorial Bridge and others Toledo High Level Bridge, before Anthony Wayne Bridge became and remained its official title. The bridge was named a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers, Toledo Section, in 2022, and in 2021 its main cables were wrapped with a watertight cover and a cable dehumidification system was installed to protect the galvanized steel from corrosion.
