Bridgehunter.com | Summer Street over Fort Point Channel Bridge

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Photos

Summer Street Bridge. Draw Span Moves Toward Viewer On Tracks Visible At Center Of Photograph

Photo taken for the Historic American Engineering Record

View photos at Library of Congress

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Street View

Description

The Summer St. bridge is a rare movable type of bridge known as a retractile draw, in which the moving span is pulled diagonally away from the navigable channel on several sets of rails. Only four of these have been identified in the country, two of which are on Summer St. in Boston. The form is thought to have been invented by T. Willis Pratt in the 1860's. This bridge is a double retractile: parallel spans pull away from the center in opposite directions. Despite its deteriorating condition, the bridge is the center element of the rich Fort Point Channel Bridge District. / The Summer Street Retractile Bridge is the only known surviving electrically-operated, paired-leaf oblique retractile drawbridge. Despite its poor condition and loss of much of its operating equipment and auxiliary structures (gates, Tender's House, and pedestrian waiting shelters), several of the early components (superstructure, retractile rails, wheels, and operating machinery on the south side) remain. The Summer Street Retractile Bridge is one of five surviving movable bridges located in the proposed Fort Point Channel Historic District. It is one of eight known remaining nineteenth-century movable bridges in the Massachusetts Highway Department Historic Bridge Survey.

-- Historic American Engineering Record

Facts

Overview: Retractile deck plate girder bridge over Fort Point Channel on Summer Street
Location: Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts
Status: Open to traffic
History: Built 1899, Rehabilitated 1918, 1952, 1959, 1967, 1990, and 1998.
Builder: - Berlin Iron Bridge Co. of East Berlin, Connecticut
Design: Rectractable
Dimensions: Length of largest span: 89.6 ft.
Total length: 502.0 ft.
Deck width: 32.2 ft.
Recognition: Eligible for the National Register of Historic Places
Approximate latitude, longitude: +42.35092, -71.05174 (decimal degrees)
42°21'03" N, 71°03'06" W (degrees°minutes'seconds")
Approximate UTM coordinates: 19/331013/4690778 (zone/easting/northing)
USGS topographic map: Boston South
Inventory numbers: MA B16031 (Massachusetts bridge number)
BH 49469 (Bridgehunter.com ID)
Inspection (as of 08/2010): Deck condition rating: Good (7 out of 9)
Superstructure condition rating: Good (7 out of 9)
Substructure condition rating: Satisfactory (6 out of 9)
Appraisal: Functionally obsolete
Sufficiency rating: 69.8 (out of 100)
Average daily traffic (as of 2010): 26,500

Update Log

March 21, 2012: Posted HAER photos
August 31, 2011: Added by Luke Harden

Sources

Luke Harden - lukemh9 [at] gmail [dot] com
HAER MA-41 - Summer Street Retractile Bridge, Spanning Fort Point Channel at Summer Street, Boston, Suffolk County, MA
Historicbridges.org - by Nathan Holth
Historicbridges.org - by Nathan Holth
Historicbridges.org - by Nathan Holth

Summer Street over Fort Point Channel Bridge