The Almonaster Avenue Bridge is a

bascule bridge A bascule bridge (also referred to as a drawbridge or a lifting bridge) is a moveable bridge with a counterweight that continuously balances a span, or leaf, throughout its upward swing to provide clearance for boat traffic. It may be single- o ...

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

. The bridge has two vehicular lanes of Almonaster Avenue and two

railroad Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

tracks over the

Industrial Canal The Industrial Canal is a 5.5 mile (9 km) waterway in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. The waterway's proper name, as used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and on NOAA nautical charts, is Inner Harbor Navigation Canal ( IHNC). ...

. The bridge is named after Almonaster Avenue on which it is built. It is one of the first four bridges built by the Port of New Orleans and was completed in 1919Almonaster Avenue Bridge, New Orleans / Emporis.com
/ref> in order to provide railroad access across the Inner Harbor-Navigational Canal, locally referred to as the Industrial Canal. Besides Almonaster Bridge, two of the sister bridges at St. Claude Avenue and Seabrook, remain in service today. The bridge also served to re-connect Old Gentilly Road, which had been severed by the construction of the Industrial Canal. (Almonaster Avenue did not exist at this point.) Old Gentilly Road was part of the Old Spanish Trail and provided the only vehicular route east out of New Orleans at the time.

U.S. Route 90 U.S. Route 90 or U.S. Highway 90 (US 90) is an east–west major United States highway in the Southern United States. Despite the "0" in its route number, US 90 never was a full coast-to-coast route. With the exception of a short-lived ...

was routed over the bridge from 1926 until 1932, when the original Danziger Bridge on the new Chef Menteur Highway was completed to the north. The bridge has a horizontal clearance of with unlimited vertical clearance when fully retracted. The Almonaster Bridge provides two vehicular lanes and a single railroad track crossing down the center of the span. Since Hurricane Katrina destroyed the roadways leading up to it, the bridge now normally stays in the up position, being lowered as needed for rail traffic. The Port of New Orleans, the Regional Planning Commission, and the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development have an ongoing feasibility study underway for replacing the bridge with a modern structure.

References

{{coord, 30, 0, 16.3, N, 90, 1, 33.3, W, type:landmark, display=title Bridges in New Orleans Bascule bridges in the United States Road-rail bridges in the United States Bridges completed in 1919 Railroad bridges in Louisiana Road bridges in Louisiana 1919 establishments in Louisiana