The New Richmond Swing Bridge, also known as The Fifty-Seventh Street Bridge, is a one lane swing bridge in Michigan. Located in Allegan County's Manlius Township, it connected 57th Street with Old Allegan Road over the Kalamazoo River until its closure to vehicular traffic. The name New Richmond comes from a former mining town in the area of the same name.
It was built in 1879 at a time when the Kalamazoo River was navigable from Lake Michigan.
The bridge's four spans reach 429 feet (131 m). A manually operated swing span was in use as late as 1925. It is one of the oldest metal truss bridges in the state of Michigan and the state's longest pony truss bridge. It is also believed to be the oldest surviving highway swing bridge in the United States.
Closed to vehicular traffic in 1997 for safety reasons, the bridge is now used for pedestrians to access parkland on both sides of the river.
On April 1, 1998, the bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places as structure #98000273.
- Swing Pivot (permanently locked)
- Historical marker
Read more about New Richmond Swing Bridge: See Also
Famous quotes containing the words richmond, swing and/or bridge:
““Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.””
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Swing low swing low sweet sweet chariot.
Nothing but a plain black boy.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“Crime seems to change character when it crosses a bridge or a tunnel. In the city, crime is taken as emblematic of class and race. In the suburbs, though, it’s intimate and psychological—resistant to generalization, a mystery of the individual soul.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)