A Very Short Bio Of The Ben Franklin Bridge

A VERY SHORT BIO OF THE BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BRIDGE By tour guide Harry G. Kyriakodis, Esq. After years of talking about constructing a tunnel under the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Camden, leaders from Pennsylvania and New Jersey began planning for building a bridge across the river in 1919. Construction of the Delaware River Bridge began on January 6, 1922, and it opened to traffic on July 1, 1926, just in time for the nation's Sesquicentennial celebration in Philadelphia. The study of the several sites proposed for the bridge entailed one of the first traffic surveys in America. Costing just over 37 million dollars to build, the Delaware River Bridge was an instant success, attracting 35,000 vehicles a day to cross the Delaware at 25 cents a passage. It initially competed with the ferries that had darted across the Delaware since William Penn's time. In only a few years, the arcing wonder supplanted them entirely. In addition, the PATCO HighSpeed commuter rail line currently uses the bridge to cross over the river into Center City Philadelphia. The chief designer and engineer of the structure was Ralph Modjeski (1861-1940). Architect Paul Philippe Cret (1876-1945) designed the huge stone anchorages on either side of the river. The bridge is 128 feet and 6 inches wide, and its length from portal to portal is 8,291 feet. The length becomes 9,620 feet when the plazas are included. The diagonally-braced towers rise nearly 400 feet above the river. The main piers weigh 121,146 tons; the anchorages, 440,322 tons. And over 25,000 miles of cable were used on the bridge in two main cables, each 30 inches in diameter. The structure's 1,750 foot-long main span was once the world's longest single suspension span. While it lost its main span title to the Ambassador Bridge linking Detroit and Windsor, Canada, in 1929, the Delaware River Bridge spawned a new era of long-span bridge construction that lasted through the late 1930s. It has been characterized as the "first distinctly modern suspension bridge built on a grand scale." On January 17, 1956, the span's name was changed to Benjamin Franklin Bridge to mark the 250th anniversary of Franklin's birth and to distinguish it from the newly-constructed Walt Whitman Bridge. In 1986, the bridge was lit with narrow-beam metal halide fixtures by the architectural firm of Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates. And to mark the Ben Franklin's 75th birthday in 2001, the bridge received digital lighting on both sides to bring flashing color to its road deck. See Modjeski, Ralph, et al., The Bridge Over the Delaware River Connecting Philadelphia, P.A. and Camden, N.J.: Final Report of the Board of the Engineers to the Delaware Bridge Joint Commission (1927) and The World's Greatest Suspension Bridge: Philadelphia to Camden; The Part Played in Its Construction by the American Cable Company, Inc. (New York, NY: American Cable Company, Inc., 1926) for more about this structure, which is managed by the Delaware River Port Authority. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_Bridge, www.phillyroads.com/crossings/benjaminfranklin, www.workshopoftheworld.com/center_city/bridge.html,

www.ushistory.org/Franklin/philadelphia/bridge.htm, www.whyy.org/tv12/secrets/bfb.html, www.bridgepros.com/projects/Ben_Franklin_Bridge/index.htm, and www.drpa.org.

Original cross-section of the roadway This is from A Friendly Guide Book to Philadelphia and the Wanamaker Store (Philadelphia, PA: John Wanamaker, 1926), at 19: The Delaware River Bridge, the largest suspension bridge in the world, became a thoroughfare on July 1st, 1926. The opening of this suspended roadway has realized plans nurtured for decades by the two States connected, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It is regarded as one of the most important civic and industrial developments of the present generation. From plaza to plaza, the bridge is 1.8 miles long, the main span being 1,750 feet. Clearance of the structure above mean high water is 135 feet. The two towers, flanking either bank of the Delaware, stand 385 feet above mean high water. The Philadelphia approach is at Sixth Street, between Race and Vine, and in Camden the beginning of the mighty bridge is at Seventh and Penn Streets. The roadway between the curbs is 57 feet. The breadth over all is 125 feet, allowing provision for four lines for electric cars, if finally decided upon; six lines of vehicular traffic, and two ten-foot paths for pedestrians above the outside lines of tracks. The approximate cost of the bridge is $37,196,971. Tolls are to be levied for a period sufficiently long to defray the cost of the structure. "Tolls are to be levied for a period sufficiently long to defray the cost of the structure." Ha!