The St. Claude 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 ...

with four vehicular lanes 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). ...

New Orleans, Louisiana New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

. The bridge was designed by the

Strauss Bascule Bridge Company Joseph Baermann Strauss (January 9, 1870 – May 16, 1938) was an American structural engineer who revolutionized the design of bascule bridges. He was the chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge, a suspension bridge. Life, beginnings and death ...

of Chicago and built in 1919 by the Bethlehem Steel Bridge Corporation. It was originally a combination railroad and automobile bridge, with two pairs of railroad tracks in the center of the lift span and automobile lanes straddling it. The railroad is no longer there, its place on the bridge taken by additional vehicular lanes. One lane in each direction passes through the truss of the bridge and one lane passes alongside the truss. The bridge is integrated into the

Industrial Canal Lock The Inner Harbor Navigation Canal Lock—commonly known as Industrial Canal Lock or simply Industrial Lock—is a navigation lock in New Orleans. It connects the Lower Mississippi River to the Industrial Canal and other sea-level waterways ...

structure, on the river side of the lock chamber; it raises when marine traffic enters or exits the lock. The Upper Ninth Ward, which includes neighborhoods such as the Bywater neighborhood, is on the upriver side of the bridge, and the

Lower Ninth Ward The Lower Ninth Ward is a neighborhood in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana. As the name implies, it is part of the 9th Ward of New Orleans. The Lower Ninth Ward is often thought of as the entire area within New Orleans downriver of the Indus ...

on the downriver side. In the aftermath of the levee failures during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, many people took refuge from the flooding atop the bridge, and people from the severely flooded Lower Ninth Ward used it to get to the dry, high ground near the river on the upriver side of the bridge. For some months after the storm the bridge was the only open direct route between the Lower Ninth Ward and the rest of New Orleans.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Claude Avenue Bridge Bridges in New Orleans Bascule bridges in the United States Road-rail bridges in the United States Road bridges in Louisiana Railroad bridges in Louisiana