Crews begin reassembling historic cast-iron bridge in Brownsville
Crews begin reassembling historic cast-iron bridge in Brownsville
Crews began reassembling the cast-iron bridge in Brownsville this week nearly two years after the historic 187-year-old span over Dunlap Creek was dismantled for a total refurbishing.
The painstaking work began Monday afternoon as the heavy cast-iron segments were lifted high into the air with a large crane and lowered into place where ironworkers on lifts bolted them into wall-shoring below.
Each of the metal sections was laid out in a nearby parking lot, and workers could be seen searching for the next connecting piece. Each was numbered when the bridge was disassembled and will be put back in place in the exact position where they once supported the structure.
One by one, workers secured straps around each piece and a telehandler forklift picked up individual sections from the storage area and carried them to the telescopic crane nestled just above the creek.
The reassembly process has been delayed several times as it took longer than expected for a Michigan-based company to refurbish the original cast-iron pieces and place a protective paint coating that will give the bridge a brown hue. Heavy rain in recent weeks also caused delays as crews were unable to access the site at times due to flooding in the creek where workers were building temporary supports to help rebuild the bridge.
As part of the project, a new pedestrian bridge was completed in January and will be situated next to where the span is now being rebuilt.
The intricacy of the project, which included blasting and repainting the cast iron, coupled with the delicate nature of the metal, caused the completion date to be pushed back multiple times. Construction was initially expected to wrap up earlier this year to once again allow traffic to pass on Market Street in the borough, but that reopening date has now been pushed back to the end of the year, depending on the weather.
The official state Department of Transportation detour takes traffic to Route 40 on the Lane Bane Bridge and through West Brownsville before returning on the Brownsville Bridge back into the other side of town. But an unofficial detour on nearby Charles Street that takes traffic over Dunlap Creek on a smaller bridge has mostly alleviated inconvenience for local drivers.
The bridge, which opened in 1839 and allowed travelers on the National Road to cross Dunlap Creek and was the first cast-iron metal span in the country, was closed in mid-November as part of PennDOT’s $9 million project to save the historic structure. The bridge is on the National Register of Historic Places and is a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, so it is being restored to how it originally looked when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built it nearly two centuries ago.