The essential principle underpinning the Burr arch truss design was that the arch should carry the entire load of the bridge while the trusses, of king-post form, should keep the bridge rigid. Good examples of Burr arch truss bridges are found mostly in India and Pennsylvania, such as the Baumgardener’s Covered Bridge of 1860 with a 32-metre span, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. But fine early examples survive also in West Virginia – notably those at Philippi of 1852 and at Barrackville, of 1853, both designed by Lemuel Chenoweth. The longest automobile-carrying covered bridge in the US is the splendid 140-metre-long Cornish-Windsor Bridge, of 1866 in Cornish, New Hampshire incorporating a clear span of 62m.
Trestle viaducts
Characteristic in parts of North America was the practice of carrying railway tracks on often highly-elevated and prodigiously long timber-built trestle viaducts. Such things had been built in Europe during the early years of the railway age when speed and economy were required – indeed Isambard Kingdom Brunel was quite a master of the art, constructing over forty in Cornwall alone during the 1850s – but there was nothing to compare with the huge scale of the American creations. Trestle viaducts must have been, in the early years in the United States, truly astonishing and unprecedented things to behold – they must have convinced the innocent and those uninitiated into the wonders of the railway age, that smoke-belching and bellowing steam engines and such monstrous creations as the viaducts were all just part of the Devil’s ride from hell. Studying early photographs of trestles – for many of the best are now long gone – it is still possible to capture some of the original drama of their first appearance.
Unlike traditional buildings, their close-packed structure gives them no obvious grace, and they often look impossibly bizarre or outlandish as they cross ravines or gorges that had lain pristine for eons and impassable to man. They possess instead a sort of crude, utilitarian strength and power that is almost sinister, as if they are bridges built for brute creation. For these reasons, the mightiest trestles are mesmerising to behold, awe-inspiring and tremendous examples of the emotions Edmund Burke explored in the mid eighteenth century in his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of our Idea of the Sublime and Beautiful: ‘The emotion caused by the great and the sublime…[the] terrible with regard to sight… is Astonishment…that state of the soul, in which all motions are suspended, with some degree of horror…’.18 Good examples are the Portage Viaduct, one of the ‘wonders of the age’ when completed in 1852; the vastly long Lucin Cut-off Viaduct across the Great Salt Lake in Utah, built with Douglas fir from 1902 to 1904, disused since the 1950s and now being dismantled; and the long-demolished Bloedel Donovan’s Viaduct of 1920 over the Skykomish River, in King County, Washington.
Of course, long before the end of the nineteenth century, metal started to replace wood for viaduct construction, which resulted in a great reduction in structural bulk and increase in elegance. The Garabit Viaduct in France of 1884, is a supreme example (see page 264), but also memorable are the 625-metre-long and 92-metre-high Kinzus Viaduct of 1882 in McKean County, Pennsylvania, which was grievously damaged by a tornado in 2003; the Meldon Viaduct, Okehampton, Devon, England, built between 1871 and 1874; and the Lethbridge Viaduct, in Alberta, Canada, of 1909, which is the longest metal-built viaduct in the world.
Masonry
Pioneering brick-built bridges with carriageways supported on vaults were constructed in Mesopotamia from at least the sixth century BC – for example, the famed bridge across the Euphrates in Babylon. Stone vaulted and arched bridges, as well as stone lintel bridges are recorded in the Anatolia and Aegean regions from the second century BC. Possibly far older masonry bridges survive in the Peloponnese, Greece, where there are a number of what appear to be Mycenaean bridges dating from around 1,300 to 1,190 BC. A good example is the 22-metre-long Arkadiko or Kazarma Bridge, near Tiryns, that is constructed with cyclopean masonry in typical Mycenaean manner and incorporates a corbel arch. However, the earliest surviving masonry bridges, with verified histories and that represent a coherent body of work, are those built by Rome (see pp 56). A good, typical and early example is the Ponte Fabricio, in Rome of 62 BC and restored AD 19 that crosses the Tiber to an island by means of two semi-circular arches, separated by a narrow higher arch to allow floodwater to pass without putting undue lateral pressure on the bridge. Other examples include the Ponte Milvio in Rome, of 115–109 BC, that carries the Via Flaminia into Rome on five wide semi-circular arches, and the Ponte d’Augusto, of AD 50, in Rimini. A fascinating Roman period bridge is the Romi or Sasani Bridge at Dezful, Khuzestan, Iran. It was constructed in AD 250 by Shapur I, ruler of the Second Persian Empire, who may have used Roman engineers captured when he defeated Emperor Valerian.
Although Roman structural theory – and aesthetics – preferred the use of arches of semi-circular form, the advantages of segmental arches were recognized (with the possibility of greater span they could bridge a river with fewer piers) and occasionally applied. For example, the now ruined Limyra Bridge, at Lycia in Turkey, that incorporates wide-span segmental arches – some up to 15 metres in span – to create a bridge with a very low height; the Alconétar Bridge across the Tagus, in the Extremadura region in Spain, built perhaps during Emperor Trajan’s reign by Apollodorus of Damascus and now in ruins; and the also ruined Ponte San Lorenzo, Padua, of 47 BC, with very slender piers and spans of up to 14.4 metres. The sorry states of most of the Roman bridges incorporating segmental arches would suggest that this form was not particularly stable and certainly not able to take the buffets of time as well as the more robust semi-circular arched bridges.
A particularly intriguing early stone-built bridge is the Malabadi Bridge over the Batman River, Diyarbakir, Turkey. It was built around 1146 during the Seljuk period, has booths or hostels at either end, and rooms for travellers – indeed a caravanserai – located within its spandrels. Its main, central, arch is slightly pointed and has a span of 38.8 metres – at the time one of the longest in the world.
Of similar date, but very different in form, are the corbel arched bridges of Cambodia, such as the twelfth to thirteenth century Naga Bridge, at Angkor Thom, on which gods and demons pull on a huge snake, stirring the ocean of milk as in the Hindu creation myth. The longest of the type – stretching 75 metres, is the Kampong Kdie Bridge in Cambodia dating from the twelfth century. The corbelled-out construction of the arches allowed only very limited spans but, in consequence, created no hump or rise in profile so such bridges made excellent flat and even causeways, leading across lakes to temples, and fine places for the display of sacred art.
The Malabadi Bridge, Diyarbakir, Turkey, was constructed around 1146 and its masonry-built and slightly pointed arch has a span of 38.8 metres - at the time one of the longest in the world. Rest rooms for travellers, a caravanserai, - are located within the bridge’s haunches.
In western culture, immensity of scale – particularly of span – grew increasingly important as the practical demands of bridge construction increased. This culminated with the brick-built Maidenhead Bridge in Berkshire, England, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel for the Great Western Railway and completed in 1839. It incorporates a pair of shallow segmental aches, each with a span of 39 metres, making them the longest and flattest brick-built arches ever formed. In 1902 the Rockville Bridge over the Susquehanna River was completed in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and which – with a length of 1,150 metres, became – and remains – the longest stone-arched bridge in the world. This bridge – offering a vast, open and noble promenade across the river – would surely have delighted Charles Dickens as much as its now long-lost and ‘profoundly dark’ precursor across the river ‘perplexed’ him.
Metal
The age of all-metal bridge construction starts, to all intents and purposes, in England with the epoch-making Iron Bridge, in Coalbrookdale, Shropshire. Completed in 1779, it was the boisterous and precocious child of the Industrial Revolution. It