Antietam Avenue Bridge

About the Antietam Street Bridge, From Michigan Historic Sites Online

Narrative Description:

The Dequindre line of the Grand Trunk Railroad corridor, which is depressed below grade, runs perpendicular to the Detroit River. It is just northeast of downtown Detroit, between Orleans and St. Aubin. The route is served by a number of grade separations, including the Antietam Street Bridge, the Chestnut Street Bridge located just to the southeast, and the M-3 (Gratiot Ave.) Bridge to the northwest. Each solid concrete parapet railing of the slightly skewed Antietam Street Bridge has three recessed panels-- two rectangles and a square-- between eight concrete posts. Luminaries are situated at each end of the sidewalk, on the roadway side. The design of the four fixtures features a cylindrical wood pole supported by a metal base. The original metal arms of the luminaries carry newer globes. A metal manhole cover just beyond the northwest end of the bridge is stamped "Public Lighting Commission 1930." The bridge is supported by two piers, which consist of five metal posts on a single concrete base. The posts are braced at the top by arched metal struts.

Statement of Significance:

 In the first decades of the twentieth century, Detroit experienced substantial industrial growth. By the 1920s, there were over 400 industrial firms operating between Woodward Avenue, which bisects downtown Detroit, and the city's north (Belt Line) and east (Detroit River) boundaries. The city's rather haphazard street plan, the result of incremental platting, impeded traffic flow, particularly on east-west routes. Traffic jams were compounded by the expansion of factories, which sometimes require street closures, and by the network of railroad tracks essential for transporting raw materials and finished goods. In January 1923, in an attempt to improve the situation, the city and the Grand Trunk Railroad launched a ten-year program to build 22 grade separations. Each party paid part of the construction cost. By 1926, Detroit's grade separation program was "fulfilling the expectations of its sponsors," according to John W. Reid of the city's Department of Public Works. By March 1930, sixteen of the crossings were finished, including four surveyed in 1995 as part of the historic bridge inventory: Adelaide, Chestnut, Division, and Gratiot. The bridge at Antietam Street was completed soon thereafter. The Antietam Street Bridge was teamed as a one-way pair with the Chestnut Street Bridge in 1964, when St. Aubin Boulevard was reconstructed. The Grand Trunk Railroad tracks that once ran beneath this bridge extended northwest to connect with a network of other lines. To the southeast, near the shore of the Detroit River, the tracks turned to parallel the river and serve the substantial factories that developed in this area in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including the Detroit-Michigan Stove Plant, the United States Rubber Company Plant, and the Parke-Davis Laboratories. The railroad also continued along the river to the southwest, terminating at the Grand Trunk's Brush Street Depot in downtown Detroit. The depot and most of the industrial plants have been demolished. One of the pair of tracks that ran in the corridor below the Chestnut Bridge has been removed. The corridor and grade separation structures, however, remain noteworthy products of a significant grade separation effort initiated in response to Detroit's explosive industrial and population growth in the first decades of the twentieth century. The Chestnut and Antietam bridges are eligible for the National Register under Criterion A as well-preserved representations of this effort. The structures and corridor should also be considered for an historic district.