Spokane Street Bridge

The Spokane Street Bridge, also known as the West Seattle Low-Level Bridge, is a concrete double-leaf swing bridge in Seattle, Washington. It carries Southwest Spokane Street over the Duwamish River, connecting Harbor Island to West Seattle. It has two separate end-to-end swing-span sections, each 480 feet (150 m) long. Its construction was finished in 1991, replacing an earlier bridge destroyed by a collision. It is named after Spokane Street, which itself is named after Spokane, Washington, which is named after the Spokane people.

Each 7,500-short-ton (6,800 t) leaf of the bridge floats on a 100-inch (2.5 m) steel barrel in hydraulic oil, situated in center piers at each side of the river. As the bridge intersects the river at an oblique angle, both leaves rotate only 45 degrees (one-eighth turn) to clear the shipping channel instead of the 90-degree turn of most swing spans. It is claimed to be the only bridge of its type in the world and it has received several awards for its innovation, including the Outstanding Engineering Achievement Award of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1992.

The bridge was featured in a 2007 episode of Really Big Things shown on the Discovery Channel.

The Spokane Street Bridge is the lower of the two bridges visible in this picture. Behind it is the higher West Seattle Bridge.

History

The original bridge at this location was a 1924 bascule bridge. This bridge was constructed to replace it after a long drawn out process to secure funding. Its construction was as part of the construction of the larger West Seattle Bridge next to it.

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