Louisville Municipal Bridge, Pylons and Administration Building

About this property

The George Rogers Clark Memorial Bridge, known locally as the Second Street Bridge, is a four-lane cantilevered truss bridge crossing the Ohio River between Louisville, Kentucky, and Jeffersonville, Indiana, that carries US 31. Debate to build a highway bridge connecting Louisville to Jeffersonville began in 1919. Both cities and the public were in favor of building the bridge, but how to fund the project was unclear. In 1926 a ballot measure was voted down by residents which would have allowed the government to fund the bridge construction. A similar measure to fund the bridge construction with municipal insured bonds was voted down shortly after. Officials finally agreed to authorize a private company to construct the bridge using private funds, and they were granted authority to toll the bridge to recoup their investment. The bridge was designed by Ralph Modjeski and Frank Masters with architectural details handled by Paul Philippe Cret of Philadelphia. Construction of the approaches and administration buildings began in 1926, and construction of the bridge itself began in June 1928 by the American Bridge Company of Pittsburgh at a cost of $4.7 million. The bridge was constructed using a newly invented method. Rather than build out from the shore, the bridge was constructed from the center towards land. The new method proved successful, and was subsequently used in the construction of many other bridges including the Oakland Bay Bridge in San Francisco a few years later. Newspapers reported two deaths during the construction of the bridge. The first worker died in 1929 after being struck by an iron crank, and a second worker died falling from the bridge and landing on a barge. President Herbert Hoover dedicated the bridge at its opening. It was opened to the public on October 31, 1929, as the Louisville Municipal Bridge and operated as a toll bridge. The toll was 35 cents until December 31, 1936, when it was lowered to 25 cents. The last of the bonds that financed the construction were redeemed in 1946, and the tolls were removed. On January 17, 1949, the bridge was renamed in honor of George Rogers Clark, recognized as the founder of Louisville and neighboring Clark County, Indiana. The bridge was rehabilitated in 1958. There was a movement in the 1950s to restore tolls, as traffic on the bridge had reached capacity and funding was needed for an additional bridge, but a toll was opposed strongly by most residents. Ultimately most of the funds for two additional bridges (for motor vehicles only) that carry interstate highways came from the federal government.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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