Chain Bridge at Falls of Schuylkill was an 1808 iron-chain suspension bridge built across the

Schuylkill River The Schuylkill River ( , ) is a river running northwest to southeast in eastern Pennsylvania. The river was improved by navigations into the Schuylkill Canal, and several of its tributaries drain major parts of Pennsylvania's Coal Region. It fl ...

, north of

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

. Designed by inventor James Finley, it became the model for his later chain suspension bridges. It collapsed in 1816 under a heavy load of snow.

History

The Chain Bridge had two spans: an eastern one of 200 feet (60.96 m), and a western one of about 100 feet (30.48 m). The bridge's chain cables were carried over paired

A-frame An A-frame is a basic structure designed to bear a load in a lightweight economical manner. The simplest form of an A-frame is two similarly sized beams, arranged in an angle of 45 degrees or less, attached at the top, like an uppercase lett ...

wooden towers on its east and west abutments, and a third pair of towers atop a stone pier built in the river. Its chains were made of 1.5-inch-square (3.8 cm) iron bar wrought into links of between 8 and 12 feet (2.44 and 3.66 m) in length. These were used for both the cables and the vertical suspenders. The suspenders were attached to 10-by-5-inch (25.4 cm x 12.7 cm) wooden joists spaced 10 feet (3 m) apart, and covered by a 2.5-inch-thick (6.4 cm) wooden deck that was 18 feet (5.5 m) wide and 306 feet (93.26 m) long. Although Finley patented his Falls of Schuylkill bridge and publicized it widely, it was not a success. "''Part of the superstructure broke down in September, 1810, while a drove of cattle was crossing it, and in January, 1816, the bridge fell down, occasioned by the great weight of snow which remained on it, and a decayed piece of timber.''" A wooden covered bridge was built upon the Chain Bridge's abutments in 1818, but washed away in 1822. The Philadelphia & Reading Railway Bridge (1853–56, still in use) crosses the Schuylkill at the approximate location of the Chain Bridge.

Images

The illustration above (drawn by architect William Strickland) was published in the June 1810 issue of ''The Port Folio''. It is frequently misidentified as Finley's

Jacob's Creek Bridge Jacob's Creek Bridge (1801, demolished 1833) was the first iron-chain suspension bridge built in the United States. Designed by James Finley, a local judge and inventor, it spanned Jacob's Creek, just south of Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania. Nothi ...

, but that bridge had a single 70-foot span. Strickland's elevation shows a multi-span bridge, and the caption below it reads "200 ft. span." Artist

Thomas Birch Thomas Birch (23 November 17059 January 1766) was an English historian. Life He was the son of Joseph Birch, a coffee-mill maker, and was born at Clerkenwell. He preferred study to business but, as his parents were Quakers, he did not go to t ...

painted the bridge twice in 1811; one painting is at the

Historical Society of Pennsylvania The Historical Society of Pennsylvania is a long-established research facility, based in Philadelphia. It is a repository for millions of historic items ranging across rare books, scholarly monographs, family chronicles, maps, press reports and v ...

, the other is in a private collection. A watercolor copy of HSP's Birch painting (by Russian artist Pavel Svinin) is in the collection of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

.Avrahm Yarmolinsky,
Picturesque United States of America, 1811, 1812, 1813, Being a Memoir on Paul Svinin
' (New York: William Edwin Rudge, 1930), plate 35.

References

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Sources

*
The Port Folio
', vol. 3, no. 6 (June 1810). *Joseph Jackson, ''Encyclopedia of Philadelphia'' (Harrisburg: National Historical Association, Inc., 1931), vol. 2, pp. 411–12. Bridges over the Schuylkill River Bridges completed in 1808 Suspension bridges in Pennsylvania Bridges in Philadelphia Chain bridges Demolished bridges in the United States Road bridges in Pennsylvania Demolished buildings and structures in Pennsylvania Wrought iron bridges in the United States

History

Images

See also

References

Sources