West End Bridge (Pittsburgh)

The West End Bridge is a steel bowstring arch bridge over the Ohio River in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, approximately one mile below the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. The bridge was built from 1930 to 1932 primarily by the American Bridge Company (superstructure) and the Foundation Company (substructure) and was the world's first to use tied-arch technology on a large scale. It connects the West End to the Chateau neighborhood on the North Side of Pittsburgh. The bridge was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, and the List of Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation Historic Landmarks in 2001.

The Riverlife Task Force conducted a competition in the spring of 2006 to design a pedestrian bridge across the Ohio attached to the West End Bridge. The goal of the competition was to create an iconic architectural element which ties both shore neighborhoods with the waterfronts while eliminating the need for pedestrians to cross traffic lanes and empty lots. The winning design was submitted by Endres Ware in association with OLIN, Ammann & Whitney, Auerbach Glasow, and RWDI; however, there is not yet a budget or timelime for actual construction of the winning design.

• West End Bridge.jpg

  Looking downstream

• 

  Looking upstream

See also

• List of bridges documented by the Historic American Engineering Record in Pennsylvania
• List of crossings of the Ohio River
• Pittsburgh bridges

External links

Media related to at Wikimedia Commons

• Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) No. PA-96, "West End-North Side Bridge, Spanning Ohio River, approximately 1 mile downstream from confluence of Monongahela & Allegheny rivers, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, PA", 50 photos, 19 data pages, 5 photo caption pages
• pghbridges.com
• Pedestrian bridge design competition
• RWDI