Adams Street Bridge

This is not the Adams Street Bridge that Neo visits in the movie The Matrix, although I think of that movie every time I mention this bridge!

Except for the bridge tenders house, this just looks like an innocent pony truss with vertical end posts. However when the tour ferry comes up to this bridge, the whole bridge rises like a phoenix out of the ground! When I think of a vertical lift bridge, I think of a bridge that has huge towers at each end for raising the bridge up. This bridge is also a vertical lift, but does not have those towers, nor does it have a lot of clearance when it is raised. Sailboats would be unable to pass under this bridge even when it is raised. This bridge is within sight of another bridge similar to the Adams Street Bridge, the Exchange Street Bridge. There is also another bridge like this in Gasport, NY, which I did not have time to photograph. There may be others on the Erie Canal that I am unaware of. If there are, it is likely that they would be in urban areas. The boats that would have been using the canal when this bridge was built must have not been very tall. The only reason these movable bridges appear to have been built was so that an approach ramp was not needed, since those can be hard to build in the tight quarters of urban areas. In rural areas, stationary bridges like the Day Road Bridge or Canal Road Bridge do the job, with dirt approaches doing the job of providing clearance for boats.

The bridge itself is a warren pony truss bridge riveted connections. The end posts of the bridge are vertical, not angled. There is no v-lacing on the bridge. Lattice is present under the top chords. The road deck is metal grate, and the sidewalks are wood, which is painted red. Old bricks form a pavement just before the bridge. Finding the one plaque remaining on the bridge required peeking behind a hazard sign which was rudely blocking my clear view of the plaque. The plaque identifies the Lackawanna Bridge Company of Buffalo, NY with building the bridge in 1917. Original guardrails remain on the pedestrian sidewalks. There are stairs at each end which, before liability became an issue on this planet, would have allowed pedestrians to cross the bridge even when it was raised! You can still walk up the stairs for a nice view and some different photo angles, but you are not allowed to walk across the raised bridge.

This bridge has been maintained recently, shown by the nice coat of grey paint it has on it. However, I could see heavy rust damage on some of the i-beams underneath the bridge, suggesting that this bridge was not always cared for. The nearby Exchange Street Bridge showed signs of a more extensive restoration. It is possible that the Adams Street Bridge may also be renovated in a similar way in the future.