Rating:
2 votes

Centennial Bridge

Lehigh County, Pennsylvania
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Photos 

Elevation.

Photo From PennDOT

Map 

View Uglybridges.com report

Facts 

Overview
Stone arch bridge over Saucon Creek on PA 2030
Location
Lehigh County, Pennsylvania
Status
Closed to all traffic
Future prospects
To be demolished just for the sake of demolishing it. No replacement bridge to be built. Anticipated contract notice to proceed (NTP) is August 22, 2011
History
Built 1876
Design
Stone arch
Dimensions
Length of largest span: 24.9 ft.
Total length: 75.1 ft.
Deck width: 18.7 ft.
Recognition
Posted to the National Register of Historic Places on June 22, 1988
Also called
Saucon Creek Bridge
Approximate latitude, longitude
+40.52863, -75.39181   (decimal degrees)
40°31'43" N, 75°23'31" W   (degrees°minutes'seconds")
Approximate UTM coordinates
18/466814/4486506 (zone/easting/northing)
USGS topographic map
Allentown East
Inventory numbers
PA 39 2030 0010 0096 (Pennsylvania Bridge Management System number)
PANBI 23311 (Pennsylvania BRKEY bridge number on the 2011 NBI)
BH 31207 (Bridgehunter.com ID)
Inspection (as of 09/2007)
Appraisal: Structurally deficient
Sufficiency rating: 20.5 (out of 100)
Average daily traffic (as of 2008)
524

Categories 

19th Century (3,817)
Arch (9,415)
Built 1876 (64)
Built during 1870s (544)
Closed (2,071)
Deck arch (8,692)
Doomed (786)
Lehigh County, Pennsylvania (36)
 NR-listed (2,353)
Owned by state (9,803)
Pennsylvania (3,037)
Span length under 25 feet (4,080)
Stone arch (1,925)
Structurally deficient (16,676)
Total length 75-100 feet (4,794)

Update Log 

  • June 16, 2011: New photos from Nathan Holth
  • September 29, 2010: Updated by Nathan Holth: This bridge is now doomed.

Sources 

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Comments 

Centennial Bridge
Posted June 16, 2011, by Tony Dillon (spansaver [at] hotmail [dot] com)

"I went to Pennsylvania to see this historic bridge and all I got was this stupid marker"

........This is pretty much the logic I'm running with concerning PennDOT. Before long they will have few if any historic bridges, but plenty of nice tombstones.....uhhh markers.

Centennial Bridge
Posted June 16, 2011, by Nathan Holth (form3 [at] historicbridges [dot] org)

The PennDOT bid posting for this bridge says the cost to demolish (and not replace) this historic bridge will be in the $500,000 to $1,000,000 range. With so much money apparently floating around, I find myself wondering why some can't be spent to restore historic bridges.

Saucon Creek Bridge
Posted May 19, 2011, by Nathan Holth

PennDOT, having so much money that it doesn't know what to do with it all (and apparently having eliminated repaving roads and rehabilitating historic bridges from spending possibilities), is choosing to exhaust some taxpayer dollars on reducing an 1876 multi-span stone arch bridge to a pile of rubble. No replacement. No improvement of any kind. Just spending money to destroy history.

Project Information:

Let: 06/23/2011 11:00:00 AM

Anticipated NTP: 08/22/2011

Required Completion: 06/30/2013