The Centre Street Bridge is a historic

bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...

Calgary Calgary ( ) is the largest city in the western Canadian province of Alberta and the largest metro area of the three Prairie Provinces. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806, maki ...

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

, crossing the

Bow River The Bow River is a river in Alberta, Canada. It begins within the Canadian Rocky Mountains and winds through the Alberta foothills onto the prairies, where it meets the Oldman River, the two then forming the South Saskatchewan River. These ...

, along Centre Street. The lower deck connects Riverfront Avenue in Chinatown with Memorial Drive, while the upper elevated deck crosses Memorial Drive as well, reaching into the community of Crescent Heights. Centre Street Bridge is the central point of the quadrant system of the city.

History

It was built by The City of Calgary in 1916 for $375,000. It replaced the MacArthur Bridge, a steel truss bridge built in 1907 by a land developer called the Centre Street Bridge Company Limited The MacArthur Bridge was destroyed by a flood in 1915. Centre Street Bridge was designed by John F. Greene, and features an upper and lower deck, cantilevered balconies on the upper deck, and four large cast concrete lions atop two pairs of ornamental concrete pavilions flanking each end of the bridge. The lions were cast by Scottish mason James L. Thomson. They were modelled after the bronze lions by Landseer at the base of

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Trafalgar Square Trafalgar Square ( ) is a public square in the City of Westminster, Central London, laid out in the early 19th century around the area formerly known as Charing Cross. At its centre is a high column bearing a statue of Admiral Nelson commem ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. The pavilions are ornamented with symbols of Canada and the United Kingdom: buffalo heads, maple leaves, shamrocks (Ireland), roses (England), and thistles (Scotland). The upper deck, a reinforced concrete arch structure, spans and is wide. The lower deck, an "I" girders structure, runs for and is wide. The Centre Street Bridge was listed as a Municipal Historic Resource for Calgary in 1992. The bridge went through extensive restoration in 2001, when it was closed for one year. The lower deck is configured with

reversible lane A reversible lane (British English: tidal flow) is a lane in which traffic may travel in either direction, depending on certain conditions. Typically, it is meant to improve traffic flow during rush hours, by having overhead traffic lights and l ...

s. The original lions were replaced with replicas after considerable debate. Local legends of adjacent Chinatown hold that the lions would come alive after dark and roam the city streets. One of the original lions is now located at City Hall, the remaining three were placed in long-term storage. In April 2013, a city committee voted unanimously to place the remaining lions at one or more of the new West LRT C-Train (tram) stations. In 2018, one of original lions was repaired, conserved and is now displayed in Rotary Park. The remaining two lions are in storage to protect and preserve them for foreseeable future.

Other information

The lower deck of the bridge has a clearance of only . Inattentive drivers get their trucks, RVs, and vans stuck on the narrow 2-lane lower deck of the bridge, blocking traffic. An advanced warning system was installed on the bridge approaches in 2010, cutting the number of incidents in half, but roughly 20 vehicles a year continue to get stuck. The opening scene of the 2001

Steven Seagal Steven Frederic Seagal (; born April 10, 1952) is an American actor, screenwriter and martial artist. A 7th- dan black belt in aikido, he began his adult life as a martial arts instructor in Japan and eventually ended up running his father-in-l ...

movie Exit Wounds was filmed on the bridge.

Gallery

File:Calgary Downtown night.jpg, Centre Street Bridge and Downtown Calgary at night File:Calgary2-Szmurlo.jpg, Centre Street Bridge with frozen

File:Centre_Street_Bridge_Lion.JPG, Lion

History

Other information

See also

Gallery

References

Further reading