Mill Creek Park suspension bridge - Youngstown, Ohio
N 41° 04.395 W 080° 41.332
17T E 526138 N 4546935
Valley Drive suspension bridge over Mill Creek in Mill Creek Park, Youngstown, Ohio. Built 1895 by the Youngstown Bridge Co.; rebuilt in 2007 by the DOT Construction Company of Canfield, Ohio.
Waymark Code: WMN2G3
Location: Ohio, United States
Date Posted: 12/13/2014
Views: 3
Posted to the National Register of Historic Places on October 29, 1976. Ohio Department of Transportation Structure File Number 5059941.
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A product of Youngstown's own Youngstown Bridge Company, this bridge is unlike any other bridge built by the company that survives today. The bridge uses an eyebar chain suspension system that was common in the United Kingdom but is extremely rare in the United States, with only a few examples present. The ornate decorations on this bridge also seem somewhat European as well, with decorative finals, portal cresting, and decorative railings. The eyebar suspension system is in its own right unusual and noteworthy, but even among eyebar chains it is somewhat unusual because it consists of two eyebar chains connected by additional eyebars, making it much like a "trussed eyebar chain."
In 2007 the historic integrity of this bridge was severely altered with the installation of a steel stringer bridge and complete removal of the entire flooring system and placement of a pier in the center of the bridge. The suspension system today is no longer functional and is merely a decoration. The only thing under the deck that is original is the decorative castings for the ends of the original floorbeams, which were thankfully saved and attached to the replacement floorbeams. It is excellent that Youngstown has chosen to not demolish this bridge, however it would have been nice to have instead seen a rehabilitation project that did not alter so much of this bridge. This bridge is completely unique and irreplaceable such that any aspect of the original bridge and design that is removed or altered is lost forever. Also, the pier at the center of the bridge makes the bridge look wrong and fake when viewed from beside or below.