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Key Facts |
Bridge Name | Type | Road | Location | City | Crossing |
|
La Salle Street Bridge |
Bascule (Truss) |
La Salle Street |
Cook County, IL |
Chicago |
Chicago River |
|
Technical Facts |
|
Construction Date |
Structure Length | Trunnion-Trunnion Length | Clear Span | Bridge Width | Roadway Width | Approach Spans | Navigational Vertical Clearance |
| 1928 | 347 Feet | 242 Feet | 220 Feet | 86 Feet | 56 Feet | 3 Steel Stringers | 18.7 Feet |
This bridge is similar to the nearby Franklin and Clark Street Bridges. The Grand Avenue Bridge is an example of an older bridge that utilizes this same design, but has a more clunky appearance. The Clark Street Bridge lacks the ornate railings of the Franklin Street Bridge and this La Salle Street Bridge however. The unusual shape of these bridge comes from the fact that each leaf of this double-leaf bascule bridge is essentially cantilevered out from the abutments, meaning that the each end of the bridge is supporting its half of the bridge out to the center independently of the other half of the bridge. Bascule bridges must function this way since they cannot be connected in the center.
The nickname for this bridge, Marshall Suloway Bridge, was dedicated in 1999 to honor the Commissioner of Public Works under Mayor Richard J. Daley, according to the plaque on the bridge. The bridge was built in 1928, with Strobel Steel Company building the superstructure of the bridge. The substructure of the bridge was built by the Central Dredging Company. Kelly-Atkinson Construction Company built the bridge-tender houses, and Norwood-Noonan Company installed the electrical equipment.
