Movable Bridges - Kinzie Street Bridge (1)

In the shadow of the railroad bridge sits the Kinzie Street Bridge across the North Branch of the Chicago River. The North Branch flows into the South Branch and then into the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, which was built to reverse the river's flow and improve sanitation in the 1900s.

The Kinzie Street Bridge was built in 1909. Its a single leaf bascule Pratt truss bridge and provides 105 ft of channel clearance when its open. We are looking at the trunnion side with racks along its rounded end. The operating machinery has pinion gears inserted into the racks that rotate the bascule span up and down (with the help of the counterweight). We'll take another look at this interesting bridge tomorrow.

Movable Bridges - Kinzie Street Bridge (1) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.