The Fallowfield viaduct is an important transportation link, both for streetcars and for feet. It connects central Beechview to the streets on the next hill over. But old Pa Pitt admits that he publishes this photograph, not because it is useful and educational, but simply because the lines and colors made an interesting composition.
One of many bridges around here designed by George S. Richardson, the Liberty Bridge opened in 1928, connecting the Liberty Tubes (which had opened four years earlier) directly to downtown. Here we see it from the south shore of the Mon.
The Ohio Connecting Railroad Bridge was built in 1915, and it still carries freight. It crosses the Ohio at Brunot Island, so that there are two main spans, one for the front channel and one for the only slightly narrower back channel. This is the front-channel span.
Nearest to farthest: Liberty Bridge, Panhandle Bridge, Smithfield Street Bridge, Fort Pitt Bridge, West End Bridge.
The Ninth Street or Rachel Carson Bridge: above, from the Downtown end; below, from the end of the Seventh Street or Andy Warhol Bridge.
Stanley Roush, king of public works in the 1920s and 1930s, did the architectural parts of this elegant bridge, which opened in 1933. It is almost shocking that, in a city with more bridges than any other city on earth, this is the only cable suspension bridge. (The Three Sisters are held up by steel rods rather than cables.)
We don’t pay enough attention to the railings on our bridges and viaducts. They were opportunities for architects to try out new ideas in decorative geometry, and a talented architect like Stanley Roush could produce designs worth pausing to admire.
The Bureau of Standards wanted to know what caused structural failures in bridges and how to prevent them. So…
A high-carbon steel column under test. Restrained lattice. Buckling of diagonals has begun
This picture comes from the front page of the Engineering News for July 13, 1916. The article explains some of the discoveries made possible by this huge apparatus, and would probably be very interesting to students of engineering.
