Strawberry Mansion Bridge

The Strawberry Mansion Bridge, also alias as Park Trolley Bridge (NBI #39231). This bridge is classified as “historic” in the contexts of both the United States National Registry of Historic Places and Philadelphia registry of Historic Places since 1978. It's located in the confines of Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, spanning the Schuylkill River connecting Ridge Avenue to the East with Ford Road to the West through Strawberry Drive’s park road. It was fabricated and erected by the Phoenix Bridge Company. As well a nationally recognized bridge engineer, Theodore Cooper consulted on the design with Chief Engineer Russell M. Thayer. The bridge itself is a spandrel-braced, three-hinged steel arch bridge and at that time it set records for its span length and erection speed. Its superstructure is comprised of two opposing traffic lanes for vehicular transit, and two other parallel lanes from that; a railroad lane for trolley traffic to the South and a pedestrian sidewalk to the North. The trolley route has ceased operation since 1946. On average the bridge has an ADT (average Daily Traffic) value of 14500, two percent of which is truck ADT with a value of 290. Its deck covers an area of 98620 sq ft which its components are 1242.2ft for the length and 80.0ft for the width. Its current status is open, with inspection ratings of 8 (very good condition no problems noted) for the deck and a 5 (fair condition, all primary structural elements are sound but may have minor section loss, cracking, spalling or scour) for both the superstructure and substructure. With this in regard the bridge was temporarily closed during 1991 to 1995 for renovation and refurbishment of the original structure.