Mill Street--South Branch Raisin River Bridge - Brooklyn, MI
N 42° 06.600 W 084° 14.733
16T E 727732 N 4665661
Mill Street–South Branch Raisin River Bridge is NRHP listed bridge built in 1925 carrying Mill Street over the Raisin River in Brooklyn, Michigan.
Waymark Code: WM185WF
Location: Michigan, United States
Date Posted: 06/05/2023
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This bridge is an extremely tiny but excellent example of a stone faced concrete arch bridge. Although a mere 35 feet in length, it regardless is composed of three spans. Each span is only eight feet in length! The bridge has been rehabilitated and appears to be in good condition. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Michigan Historic Bridge Inventory stated that the previous bridge at this location was a three span stone arch bridge, and suggested that the stone on the current bridge may have been salvaged from this previous bridge. If so, this would be a rare reuse of materials from a previous bridge.
When concrete first started to be used in bridge design, there was sometimes an attempt to maintain the traditional appearance of a stone arch bridge, and so stones would be placed on the outside of the bridge as a decorative facing to make the concrete bridge look like a stone arch. This practice was used on rare occasions in the years following, but perhaps less so as engineers discovered that concrete itself could be beautiful and allowed them to do things architecturally and aesthetically that were not possible with stone. However, stone-faced arch bridges enjoyed a brief resurgence in the 1930s. In the 1930s, bridges were being built as part of Depression relief programs (like the Public Works Administration), and a notable number of these ended up as stone faced concrete bridges, or stone faced corrugated metal plate arch bridges. It is not known if this bridge was associated with Depression era relief programs, but it was built in that 1930s period. -
Historic Bridges