Eagle Avenue Viaduct

Information and Findings From Ohio's Historic Bridge Inventory

Physical Description

The vertical lift bridge has a 187'-long lift main span flanked by approach spans. This is a classic Waddell-design with the battered built-up steel towers, concrete counterweights, and operators house perched in the center of the span. The trussed lift span is a Pratt configuration with polygonal upper chord and substruts.

Summary of Significance

One of four vertical lift highway bridges over the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, the 1930-31 Eagle Avenue Bridge is a complete example of the movable bridge type. It was the first vertical lift built in Cleveland. There has been no significant change in the bridge's status since the prior inventory. The eligible recommendation remains appropriate.

A vertical lift bridge is a movable bridge that rises and descends in the same vertical plane, maintaining at all times a horizontal position. Vertical lift bridges had been built in the United States since the 1850s, but the early examples had modest span lengths and were usually associated with canals, like the Erie Canal. Engineer J. A. L. Waddell's 1894 South Halsted Street bridge over the Chicago River (Chicago, Illinois) is considered the first modern vertical lift bridge. Most long-span vertical lift bridges since the South Halsted Street bridge, including the four examples in Cleveland, have been variations of the Waddell design. The Waddell vertical lift bridge has a central power source, housed in a mechanical room on the lift span and moving up and down with it. Gear trains transfer power to the winding drums and wire ropes. The span is raised and lowered by means of the ropes passing over sheaves on built-up steel towers and connected to concrete counterweights about equal to the span weight. Vertical lift bridges, most dating from the 1910s to 1960s, are found throughout the U.S. over navigable rivers and waterways. As of 2007, there were 187 vertical lift highway bridges in the U.S. as reported in federal NBI data. There are also a significant number of vertical lift railroad bridges, which operate on the same principles.

Justification

Five of the seven vertical lift or swing span movable bridges are located in industrial Cleveland over the Cuyahoga River and date to 1901. Their ranks are augmented by the many vertical lift, swing span and rolling lift bridges that carry railroads over navigable water. Railroad bridges are not included in this database, but they certainly represent their technologies as well as the vehicular examples, and when considered as a whole population, the bridge types are common. The bridge has moderate significance.

Bridge Considered Historic By Survey: Yes