Cleveland's "High Road" Bridges

1878  Superior Viaduct:
   (Bridge Hunter; Satellite, note that the streetcar tracks still exist in part of it)
1917+1965+1997  Detroit-Superior High Level Bridge:
   (Bridge Hunter; Historic Bridges; HAER; 3D Satellite, 174+ photos)

Photo from ClevelandHistorical, Image courtesy of Cleveland State Library Special Collections
A view of the viaduct shortly after it opened in 1878.

The following photo raised the question of why does a stone viaduct just end? The short answer is that the swing span was removed after the Superior Viaduct was replaced by the Detroit-Superior High Level Bridge. As you can image, the rest of this page is the long answer.

Robert Pempsell posted

The first high-level bridge across the Cuyahoga Valley was started in March 1875 and opened in Dec. 1878. Because it had a swing span, road traffic would still be stopped by some river traffic. But there would be far fewer stoppages than suffered by the low-level bridges. Plus it saved braking your buggy or wagon while going down into the valley and then the horse having to pull it back out of the valley on the other side. [ClevelandHistorical]

Photo from ClevelandHistorical, Image courtesy of Cleveland State Library Special Collections
In this photograph from 1912, the center span of the Superior Viaduct has opened to a let a ship pass underneath.
[Note the abundance of streetcars and the scarcity of cars in 1912. I found one car and a couple of trucks.]

Photo from ClevelandHistorical, Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
The swinging, center span of the Superior Avenue Viaduct, circa 1900.

In 1917 a higher level bridge was built so that no river traffic would impact the traffic on the bridge. The approaches are reinforced concrete arches and the 590' main span over the river is, obviously, a steel arch. The upper level was designed for four lanes of traffic and the lower level held six streetcar tracks. The streetcar deck was abandoned in 1955. The swing span was removed from the Superior Viaduct in 1923.

Photo from HAER OHIO,18-CLEV,22--28 (CT) from oh0124

Please see the links at the top for more information about the 1917 bridge.

This "hold Ctrl and move the mouse" Google View shows that several of the old stone arches still exist on the western side. It also shows the bridge that replaced it in the background.

Google Maps

It is interesting that the smaller arches under the upper deck of the eastern approach of the 1917 bridge don't appear in the above view. I captured this street view to confirm that the missing inter-deck arches are because I was pushing Google's 3D algorithm really hard to get a view of the stone arches.

Street View

Some of the arches of the 1878 bridge were removed in 1938.

Image courtesy of Cleveland State Library Special Collections
An arch is soon to be torn down in this 1938 photograph. Several of the viaduct's arches still stand on the west side of the river.