Found on the pages of The Chicago Tribune on May 28 of 1902. . .
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| The present-day Dearborn Street Bridge, erected in 1963 (www.histroicbridges.org) |
Big trouble in River City on this date in 1902 when the City Engineer
declared the Dearborn Street swing bridge across the Chicago River unsafe. Early in the morning a steamer ran into the
bridge abutment, the third boat to strike the bridge in less than a week, and
a city diver reported that heavy stones fell out of the abutments beneath the
surface of the water every time a team of horses passed over the span.
In and of itself this would not have been a
problem. But the other river bridges were also
in trouble. The State Street bridge was already closed, and now so was the Dearborn Street span.
This sent traffic to the overcrowded Clark Street and Rush Street
bridges, with the former “weak in some respects.”
The City Engineer said that if a bulletin were
issued, informing citizens about how they could get across the river, it would
read:
Rush Street—Usable
State Street—Down
Dearborn Street—Closed to Teams
Clark Street—Good
Wells Street—Just Repaired
Polk Street—Damaged
Twenty-Second Street—Closed to Street Car
Travel
On May 27 a steamer struck the Polk Street
Bridge, ripping out 20 feet of sidewalk.
After the Wells Street bridge broke down twice in four days, the swing
bridge was being operated with the “heaviest machinery ever operated on it.”
Reporting to the Drainage Board, Chicago’s
Chief Engineer recommended that the very next bascule bridge erected be the
Dearborn Street span. In his opinion,
“The dangerous condition of that bridge rendered it advisable to put in a new
one as soon as possible.”
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| The 1834 Dearborn bridge (www.historicbridges.org) |
Chicago’s very first movable bridge was
constructed at Dearborn street in 1834, three years before the city was
chartered. It was a timber span that
provided only a 60-foot opening for ships, a space so tight that the bridge was
ordered removed in 1839. [www.historicbridges.org]
Records seem to indicate that a second bridge
at Dearborn Street was not attempted until the late 1880’s when a deal between
Mayor Carter Harrison and Charles Tyson Yerkes moved the old Wells Street
bridge east to Dearborn Street when the new Wells Street bridge was
constructed.
Unfortunately, the plan left no provision for
bridge approaches, and The Tribune
observed in March of 1888, “As a means of crossing the river for anything but a
bird or a flying-fish it would be of not nearly so much value as a
life-preserver or a plank. With a wide
stretch of dirty water between its abutments and the dock line it would be
perched up in the air, entirely inaccessible to even the adventurous small boy.”
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| 1908 Dearborn Street Bridge (www.chicagopc.info) |
Sometime in 1908 the third Dearborn Street
bridge was completed, a Scherzer Rolling Left bascule design. The Scherzer bridge combined the balanced
counterweight of a conventional bascule bridge with a unique rolling lift
motion that eliminates most of the friction involved in the process. It was a huge improvement over the swing
bridges that spanned the river because of its compactness and the dependability
of its operation.
The existing bridge at Dearborn Street was finished
in 1963 and rehabilitated in 2006. Its main
span is 235 feet (71.6 meters) and the width of its roadway is 56 feet (17.1
meters). On an average day a little more
than 15,000 vehicles cross the span.
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