Chicago Drive Bridge

Information and Findings From MDOT

The Wyoming Bridge is a medium-span arch bridge in the city of Wyoming. It carries M-21 BR over Plaster Creek in an industrialized area adjacent to Roosevelt Park. The bridge is a 60-foot, filled spandrel arch, with earth fill and an asphalt-surfaced roadway that is flanked on both sides by concrete sidewalks. The elliptically shaped arch springs from massive concrete abutments. It features a tapered arch ring, which is cast integrally with the plain-faced concrete spandrel walls. The guardrails are solid concrete, with recessed rectangular panels; bronze “Trunk Line Bridge” plates are mounted one their inside walls. Although the neighborhood around the Wyoming Bridge has changed substantially since the bridge’s construction in 1916, the bridge itself remains unaltered and in good physical condition.

In 1916 the Michigan State Highway Department designed Trunk line Bridge No. 58 over Plaster Creek in the city of Wyoming. Located on the trunk line route that extended south of Grand Rapids, the Kent County seat, the structure featured a 60-foot, filled spandrel concrete arch. The agency hired Grand Rapids contractors Hilding and Rabe to build the bridge. Finished later that year, the structure’s $13,146.55. Cost was borne almost equally by the state highway department, the Kent County Road Commission and the Grand Rapids Railway Company. For three years the railway company ran its inter-urban cars over the bridge, but in 1919 discontinued the line and removed its tracks. The Wyoming Bridge has since carried vehicular traffic in essentially unaltered condition.

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Information and Findings From Michigan Historic Sites Online

Narrative Description:

main span number: 1 main span length: 60.0 structure length: 60.0 roadway width: 42.0 structure width: 66.0 Among the twelve Kent County structures in the Survey Sample is this medium-span arch bridge in the city of Wyoming. The Wyoming Bridge carries M-21BR over Plaster Creek in an industrialized area adjacent to Roosevelt Park. The bridge is a 60-foot, filled spandrel arch, with earth fill and an asphalt-surfaced roadway that is flanked on both sides by concrete sidewalks. The elliptically shaped arch springs from massive concrete abutments. It features a tapered arch ring, which is cast integrally with the plain-faced concrete spandrel walls. The guardrails are solid concrete, with recessed rectangular panels; bronze "Trunk Line Bridge" plates are mounted on their inside walls. Although the neighborhood around the Wyoming Bridge has changed substantially since the bridge's construction in 1916, the bridge itself remains unaltered and in good physical condition.

Statement of Significance:

In 1916 the State Highway Department designed Trunk Line Bridge No. 58 over Plaster Creek in the city of Wyoming. Located on the trunk line route that extended south of Grand Rapids, the Kent County seat, the structure featured a 60-foot, filled spandrel concrete arch. The agency hired Grand Rapids contractors Hilding and Rabe to build the bridge. Finished later that year, the structures's $13, 146.55 cost was borne almost equally by the state highway department, the Kent County Road Commission and the Grand Rapids Railway COmpany. For three years the railway company ran its inter-urban cars over the bridge, but in 1919 discontinued the line and removed its tracks. The Wyoming Bridge has since carried vehicular traffic in essentially unaltered condition. The bridge that the highway department engineers delineated for the Wyoming crossing was one that they had only just begun using. SHD began designing concrete arch bridges as early as 1908, but, unlike its practice on other structural types, the agency did not develop a standard concrete arch design. The bearing and superstructural conditions were too site-specific, SHD stated, making standardization of concrete arches impractical. Instead, the highway department used special-design concrete arches up to 80 feet in length "wherever it is possible to secure sufficiently hard foundations, and also where there is clearance enough for water to flow freely without the arch choking the stream too much," according to its Seventh Biennial Report. In 1914 SHD built its first state arch for the Trunk Line Bridge No. 3 a 50 foot span over Plaster Creek. As the trunk line system developed in the 1910s, SHD built several more arches. By 1918 the agency had conducted twelve trunk line arches, ranging in span from 35 to 85 feet. The Wyoming Bridge typified these early arches. Seven years after its completion, J. Van Buren, a student at Michigan Agricultural College, analyzed the bridge's design and construction, stating that "the State Highway Department never analyzed the arch nor the abutments." Despite protests by SHD engineers, Van Buren wrote that insufficient amounts of reinforcing steel were used in the bridge's construction, the northern and southern halves of the bridge were poured inconsistently and the arch's shape resulted in dangerous eccentricities of the resultant forces. "The position of the resultants in the abutment analyses," he concluded, "readily show a sad fallacy somewhere in the design of this bridge." Although structurally flawed, the Wyoming Bridge has functioned for some 80 years without failure. It is today distinguished as one of the few of these that continues to carry vehicular traffic in unaltered condition-- a historically and technologically significant, well preserved remnant of early trunk line bridge construction by the state highway department.