Old Lombard Street Iron Bridge

The bridge is stored on Baltimore City property leased (at a token rate) for use by the Baltimore Streetcar Museum. The bridge did carry streetcars later after its construction, but there are no plans at present for use of the bridge by either the BSM or the City. The span is unarguably historic, but no one has come forth with a feasible (or any?) adaptive reuse program in the past 30+ years that I am aware of.

So I followed the link that was attached to the earlier comment that showed the photo from 1968 of the Lombard St Bridge. I was confused because it said the location was Gwynns Falls and not Jones Falls. (I should have read on as the article explained how it was moved to Dickeysville to span Gwynns Falls in 1975).

Anyway, I dug into this and found alot of old photographs of all of the bridges that spanned Jones Falls in central Baltimore:

http://www.mdhs.org/Library/fotofind/PP0023lnk.html

but this image in particular shows the Lombard St bridge from Baltimore St:

http://www.mdhs.org/Library/Images/Mellon Images/Z5access/z5-0664.jpg

Jones Falls stream was diverted under the city at some point in time, so the need for bridges between Howard St in the North and Lombard St in the south vanished. I imagine that's why Lombard St lasted until 1975. Many of the other bridges in the gallery look quite similar, and indeed the link you sent said Bollman created 12 bridges for Baltimore. Their similarity makes it harder to say if this is the Lombard St bridge or another one that spanned Jones Falls stream.

James,

Yes that appears to be the bridge minus the pipe.

I knew it looked like a Bollman job!

I do know there were a number of extant cast iron truss bridges that were not listed on BridgeHunter. Some have been added by other users recently, I don't know if all have. I confirmed the locations for a number of them using HAER. If you need help finding or confirming any cast iron bridges in Pennsylvania, just drop me an email because I have been researching them in preparation for a massive photo-documentation project this summer.

I did a little Googling and found this article from 1994:

http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/1994/2/...

See the list of 71 known cast iron bridges given at the end. Under "Middle Atlantic", I believe this is the seventh bridge:

# 7. Lombard Street Bridge (1877). Streetcar Museum, Baltimore, Md. James Curran, Baltimore Water Dept., and Wendel Bollman. Patapsco Bridge Sc Iron Works, Baltimore, Md., builder.

That led me to this Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lombard_Street_Bridge

It states:

Lombard Street Bridge is a historic truss bridge located at Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It is an 88 foot cast iron span consisting of three lines of trusses -- two outer trusses of composite cast and wrought iron in a diagonal Pratt design and a center composite bowstring truss of Pratt-system web. It was designed in 1877 by engineer Wendel Bollman (1814-1884). It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

The link given in the Wikipedia article doesn't work, but I found it here:

http://mht.maryland.gov/nr/NRDBDetail.aspx?HDID=98&COUNTY=&S...

This was one heck of a bridge. It featured a pipe that not only carried a water main, but also served as the upper chord for an interior bowstring truss! However, it doesn't look like that part of the bridge has survived. (This is the correct bridge, right?)

I'm going to go through that list of 71 iron bridges and try to account for all of them if possible.

Yes, you did make my day! No one at my website HistoricBridges.org nor www.bridgemapper.com knew this bridge was here.

I have been planning out a trip in this region of the country (centered around SE Pennsylvania) to photo-document historic bridges, and I was unaware of this bridge. I added it to my map!

I sent an email off to Baltimore DOT and I will see if I get any sort of a reply from them.

Anthony is right, as with any cast iron compression member bridge in the USA, you are looking at a bridge probablly dating to the 1860s or 1870s.

My guess is the bridge is located where it is because its DOT property (and the bridge formerly served a city DOT owned facility) and that the museum doesn't have anything to do with it. I could be wrong however.

The top chord and verticals are strikingly similar to the Bollman Truss Railroad Bridge. For all I know it also was a RR bridge originally.

It is indeed a special bridge! Could easily date into the 1860's. I don't know how long they have had it there, but with Maryland's excellent track record with historic bridges I think it will stay until they find a home for it.

Wow! I'm glad, it sounds like I made your day! I had no idea it was even more of an exciting find than finding your average abandoned truss bridge.

As I said in the description, the bridge appears to be on the lot of the Baltimore City Department of Transportation at 2601 Falls Rd. The next building down Falls Rd is the Baltimore Streetcar Museum (notice the tracks in front of the bridge). Perhaps the bridge is an exhibit at the museum?

Incredible!!! This may be the rarest bridge in the state second only to the great Bollman Truss Railroad Bridge. It is a cast iron compression member pony truss. It is likely in storage because it was too rare to destroy but no viable preservation solution at the time it was replaced. Thus, it was placed in storage.

Anyone have any idea why this bridge is there, how long its been there, is it even a bridge, or where it was relocated from?