Lucius Beebe Memorial Library, Wakefield, Mass.

Title

Railroad marker, Cooper Street bridge, circa 1910

Description

The railroad marker in front of the Cooper Street Bridge in Greenwood indicated to travelers on the Boston & Maine Railroad that they could travel 60 miles to South Berwick, Maine and 107 miles to Portland, Maine along the Portland (West) Main Line which connected Boston with Lowell and points north. In the early 1900s, the rails carried more than 30 passenger trains in each direction every day. The Cooper Street Bridge in the background was built in 1903 by Joseph Ross, one of Boston's leading builders of wharves and bridges, including the bridge over the Merrimack River in Newburyport. The Town voted to appropriate $3,800 in 1902 to build the bridge to provide safe passage over the busy Boston & Maine right-of-way, primarily for students traveling to the newly enlarged Greenwood School on Main Street. It was one of two proposals voted on by the Town, the other being a spandrel-braced steel arch design with an option to be a six-foot wide pedestrian-only structure. The bridge is an early example of reinforced concrete arch construction 'notable for its substantial size, asymmetrical profile and the use of an unusual type of deformed rod for reinforcement'. It measures 100' long with a span length of 60' and is thicker at the west end by six inches. It was recently reported to be one of only two concrete arch bridges of its age spanning more than 50' still in use in Massachusetts."

Image from the Wakefield Municipal Gas and Light Department annual calendar, 2014

Photo courtesy of JC Marketing Associates

Contributor

Institution: Lucius Beebe Memorial Library

Wakefield Municipal Gas & Light Department (Wakefield, Mass.)

D'Onofrio, Jayne M.

Coverage

Massachusetts--Middlesex (county)--Wakefield

Date

ca. 1910

Format

image/jpeg

Publisher

Wakefield, Mass. : Wakefield Municipal Gas & Light Department

Subject

Railroads

Type

still image

Photographs

Original Format

1 picture: b & w

Extent

18 x 24 cm.