Main Street Bridge, Hartford, CT

As long as the weather stays decent enough to bike to work, I'll keep taking pictures along the way. Or a little out of the way.

This is the Main Street Bridge in Hartford; it carries Main Street over the Whitehead Highway. There was (is) some controversy about the Whitehead Highway; I guess it was going to become yet another highway twisting through Hartford, the way Route 84 does today.

You don't really notice the bridge when you're walking over it (you may notice the ornate, wrought-iron railings, though), but once you go down below, you can appreciate the beauty, skill and detail of the bridge. And also how incredibly low it is.

It wasn't always that low, and there wasn't always a road running beneath it. It originally crossed a river (the Little River), and connected Hartford proper to South Hartford. An incredibly important road and bridge. They filled in the river and built up the road and now it's a shadow of its former self.

According to the bridge's entry in the CT Historical Bridges site, the stone mason who built this bridge ended the effort completely paralyzed on one side.

This bridge is 179 years old. Still going strong.

Detail of the Main Street Bridge