I've wondered about Belle Isle's pretty Central Avenue Bridge and its similarly ornate Casino Way pedestrian bridge.
I discovered that these Belle Isle bridges are among of the country's remaining examples of spans built by one of America's most prominent bridge builders during the late 1800s and early 1900s when researching a story about a couple of bridges that caught my eye in Ohio's Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
The King Bridge Company of Cleveland, Ohio, originally built the 1890s-era Belle Isle bridges and the 1920s-era truss-style bridge I saw in the CVNP that sparked my curiosity. Zenas King founded the company in 1858 and helped move the nation's bridge building from scattered small local craft businesses into a national manufacturing industry by the late 1800s.
Meanwhile, the city of Detroit purchased a 707-acre plot of unimproved land in 1879, hiring famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted to plan a park there and oversee improvements at a salary of $7,000 per year. Olmsted created New York's Central Park and some of the country's other most famous parks, and many of his design ideas for creating spacious natural spaces in urban parks are on full display at Belle Isle.
Olmsted's layout for Belle Isle included a wide central drive, Central Avenue, and a canal that wanders around the island.
The King Bridge Company was at the peak of its prominence at this time, so it's no surprise that plans for Detroit's large island park included several spans built by the Cleveland company.
The King Bridge Company built the Central Avenue in 1893. Octagonal end posts named Col. H. Kallman as the bridge's original engineer and listed the Commissioners of Detroit's Parks and Boulevards Committee at that time.
Park officials reworked the old beam bridge in 1946-7, taking care to retain the original arched metal fascia, metal railings and concrete posts. The ornate metal worked panels below the span make its arched girder construction appear to be a metal arch bridge.
Retaining some of the original features helped retain the original look of the bridge, but the bridge's historical significance suffers from the extensive reworked and replaced structural parts.
These photos that I took this past spring show the Central Avenue Bridge in need of attention with problems like a missing railing and toppled posts.
Belle Isle's Casino Way pedestrian bridge contains many elements of its original 1893 King Bridge Company construction. The bridge crosses the canal near the island's 1877-built Casino, which is a casino in the classic sense of being a large building used for dances and other social events.
The Casino Way Bridge's ornate red guard rails, cast iron bronze plaques at the center of the span, and cast iron posts are remnants of the bridge's original construction, but the original structure is long-gone.
Our visit this past spring showed that this bridge also need attention for problems like a badly faded paint job and the broken tops of several of its iron posts.
It's fun to imagine these little Belle Isle bridges in their 1890s glory. It would be even more fun to see them properly cared for and restored to a bit of their former beauty.
Want to learn more about Belle Isle and its history? Check out Detroit's Belle Isle: Island Park Gem by Michael Rodriquez and Thomas Featherstone.
© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved