Great Britain: Glengall Bridge

The Glengall Bridge is a pedestrian crossing at Millwall Dock on the Isle of Dogs. This bridge carries Pepper Street across a north-south channel in an area of five and six story condominiums. The odd thing about the Glengall Bridge is that it's almost identical to the structure in Van Gogh's painting Bridge at Arles in Southern France.

The Bridge at Arles was a hand-operated lift bridge. The beams at the top of the towers were weighted so they could swing up (over the channel), lifting the bridge deck out of the way (and blocking the roadway).

The Glengall Bridge isn't as evocative as the Bridge at Arles. Still, it's amusing once you are aware of the resemblance. However, I don't see a mechanism on the Glengall Bridge for lifting the deck. Perhaps it's not a working copy.

There's a lot of information on The Bridge at Arles on the Internet. I found an interesting blog by John Vanderslice that includes a photo of the bridge in the 'up' position.

Great Britain: Glengall Bridge by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.