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Middle Of The Road

The history of this bridge is so ordinary, so common for bridges of its era, that it’s hard to find anything unique. Steel trusses bridges were constructed for roads and rail all over the US for decades, and honestly not all of them are unique. Saying that is, of course, not the same thing as saying they were, or are, without value.

That’s the 1903 North Park [Street] Bridge over the Grand River in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was built after a flood earlier that year destroyed the 1884 wood bridge at the site. The main structure was five 116-foot spans of through Pratt truss and originally had a wood-plank deck; as of 1990 the sidewalk north of the north truss (supported by having the main cross-deck girders cantilevered past the truss) was still plank:

The details are pretty much what you’d expect: built-up box compression members, slender tension members, cross-bracing between the top chords for wind…

As you can see in the last photo, there are knee braces between the web posts and the top-chord wind struts, in addition to the more common portal brace at the end bay (the very top of the photo).

To give a sense of how unremarkable this bridge was, the 1990 HAER report states that “There are 42 similar bridges also eligible for the National Register in Michigan.” In any case, it was closed to traffic in 1988 because of deterioration and was scheduled for demolition rather than repair. One of the five spans was salvaged during the 1991 demolition and moved to a nearby park, where it was eventually set up as a pedestrian bridge over a canal.

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