Senator Robert D. Fleming Bridge

The Senator Robert D. Fleming Bridge, commonly known as the 62nd Street Bridge, is a truss bridge that carries Pennsylvania Route 8 across the Allegheny River between the Pittsburgh neighborhoods of Morningside and Lawrenceville and Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania.

History

The Allegheny was first crossed at this point by a wooden bridge, built in 1856. This was replaced by the Sharpsburg Bridge in 1901, which was itself replaced in 1962, as it was deemed too narrow for the traffic volume that it carried.

The current bridge was completed on July 1, 1962 and is named for Robert D. Fleming, a former Republican Pennsylvania State Senator whose district featured portions of Pittsburgh's northeastern suburbs. It was built alongside and just upstream from the old bridge and consists of sixteen individual spans, including a 1,054 feet (321 m) long four span truss channel unit, with a 400 feet (120 m) long span over the river and a 494 feet (151 m) long three span girder section with a 227 feet (69 m) long central span over the railroad.

A 200 feet (61 m) long section of the bridge buckled when the Crescent Supply Co. warehouse beneath it was destroyed by fire on May 28, 1981. The bridge was reopened in January 1983.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Senator Robert D. Fleming Bridge" and modified on July 23, 2019 according to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.