The Gay Street Bridge is a pedestrian

bridge A bridge is a structure built to Span (engineering), span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or railway) without blocking the path underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, whi ...

that crosses the

Tennessee River The Tennessee River is a long river located in the Southern United States, southeastern United States in the Tennessee Valley. Flowing through the states of Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, it begins at the confluence of Fren ...

Knoxville, Tennessee Knoxville is a city in Knox County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. It is located on the Tennessee River and had a population of 190,740 at the 2020 United States census. It is the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Division ...

, United States. Completed in 1898, the bridgeMartha Carver, ''Tennessee's Survey Report for Historic Highway Bridges: Pre-1946 Masonry Arch, Timber Truss, Metal Truss, Concrete Arch, Metal Arch and Suspension Bridges'' (Nashville, Tenn.: Tennessee Department of Transportation, 2008), pp. 384–386. is the oldest of four vehicle bridges connecting Downtown Knoxville with

South Knoxville South Knoxville is the section of Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, that lies south of the Tennessee River. It is concentrated along Chapman Highway (U.S. Route 441 in Tennessee, US 441), Alcoa Highway (U.S. Route 129 in Tennessee, US 129), Ma ...

, the other three being the

Henley Bridge Henley Bridge is a road bridge built in 1786 at Henley-on-Thames over the River Thames, between Oxfordshire and Berkshire. The bridge has five elliptical stone arches, and links Hart Street in Henley with White Hill (designated the A4130) le ...

, the James E. "Buck" Karnes Bridge (

Alcoa Highway U.S. Route 129 (US 129) is a north–south United States highway that runs for in East Tennessee, from the North Carolina state line, near Tapoco, North Carolina, Tapoco, to Knoxville, Tennessee, Knoxville. In Tennessee, the highway is comp ...

), and the James C. Ford Memorial Bridge.

Description

The bridge is a

steel Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon that demonstrates improved mechanical properties compared to the pure form of iron. Due to steel's high Young's modulus, elastic modulus, Yield (engineering), yield strength, Fracture, fracture strength a ...

spandrel A spandrel is a roughly triangular space, usually found in pairs, between the top of an arch and a rectangular frame, between the tops of two adjacent arches, or one of the four spaces between a circle within a square. They are frequently fil ...

-braced (

cantilever A cantilever is a rigid structural element that extends horizontally and is unsupported at one end. Typically it extends from a flat vertical surface such as a wall, to which it must be firmly attached. Like other structural elements, a cantilev ...

)

arch An arch is a curved vertical structure spanning an open space underneath it. Arches may support the load above them, or they may perform a purely decorative role. As a decorative element, the arch dates back to the 4th millennium BC, but stru ...

ed design with a

concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of aggregate bound together with a fluid cement that cures to a solid over time. It is the second-most-used substance (after water), the most–widely used building material, and the most-manufactur ...

deck. There are five arched

truss A truss is an assembly of ''members'' such as Beam (structure), beams, connected by ''nodes'', that creates a rigid structure. In engineering, a truss is a structure that "consists of two-force members only, where the members are organized so ...

es, each long, and two approach spans at each end, all supported by a foundation of stone

piers Piers may refer to: * Pier, a raised structure over a body of water * Pier (architecture), an architectural support * Piers (name), a given name and surname (including lists of people with the name) * Piers baronets, two titles, in the baronetages ...

. The deck is wide, and consists of two vehicle lanes, each flanked by a pedestrian sidewalk. The bridge originally contained trolley tracks, but these were removed in 1938.

History

Previous bridges

The first bridge across the Tennessee River at this site was a temporary

pontoon bridge A pontoon bridge (or ponton bridge), also known as a floating bridge, is a bridge that uses float (nautical), floats or shallow-draft (hull), draft boats to support a continuous deck for pedestrian and vehicle travel. The buoyancy of the support ...

built during the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...

. It was followed by a permanent bridge with stone supporting piers, built by Union General Ambrose E. Burnside, that was washed away in a

flood A flood is an overflow of water (list of non-water floods, or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are of significant con ...

in March 1867. Knox County built a

covered bridge A covered bridge is a timber-truss bridge with a roof, decking, and siding, which in most covered bridges create an almost complete enclosure. The purpose of the covering is to protect the wooden structural members from the weather. Uncovered woo ...

at the site, which opened on May 2, 1875, but it was blown down by a

tornado A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with the surface of Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, although the ...

shortly afterward. The county sold the surviving piers and rights-of-way to G. W. Saulpaw, who built a wooden

Howe truss A Howe truss is a truss bridge consisting of chords, verticals, and diagonals whose vertical members are in tension and whose diagonal members are in compression. The Howe truss was invented by William Howe in 1840, and was widely used as a brid ...

bridge at the site in 1880. Saulpaw's bridge stood until 1898, when it was demolished after the completion of the Gay Street Bridge.

Planning and construction

The Gay Street Bridge was designed by Charles E. Fowler, chief engineer of the Youngstown Bridge Company of

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

.Designated Properties: Knoxville Historic Zoning Commission
, Knoxville-Knox County Metropolitan Planning Commission website, accessed October 15, 2009 Fowler later boasted that he had hastily sketched the bridge's design—which was chosen over three other bids—on the back of an envelope during his train ride to Knoxville to meet with county officials. Construction of the bridge, which was supervised by Fowler, began in 1897. Due to the scarcity of certain building materials during the

Spanish–American War The Spanish–American War (April 21 – August 13, 1898) was fought between Restoration (Spain), Spain and the United States in 1898. It began with the sinking of the USS Maine (1889), USS ''Maine'' in Havana Harbor in Cuba, and resulted in the ...

, Fowler was forced to modify his original design, and was constantly bickering with Knox County officials over who should pay the extra costs.

Operation

The Gay Street Bridge opened to traffic on July 9, 1898.Gay Street Bridge
Historic Bridges of the United States website, accessed October 15, 2009 Knox County issued a statement proclaiming the bridge "for the use of all the world except Spain," in reference to the war which had been raging throughout the year. Engineering journals such as '' Engineering News'' and ''Bridge Engineering'' praised the bridge's combination of safety and aesthetics. Because the 1898 bridge included trolley tracks, its construction accelerated residential development in the Island Home Park area on the south side of the river, which previously had been isolated from downtown Knoxville. After receiving poor safety ratings, the bridge was extensively repaired in a project that required its closure from December 2001 to April 2004. Repairs included replacement of

rust Rust is an iron oxide, a usually reddish-brown oxide formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the catalytic presence of water or air moisture. Rust consists of hydrous iron(III) oxides (Fe2O3·nH2O) and iron(III) oxide-hydroxide (FeO(OH) ...

ed pin joints and bearings and replacement of concrete on the bridge deck.

Closure

On June 25, 2024, after an annual inspection by the TN Department of Transportation (TDOT), the bridge was closed to all traffic, due to finding a "compromised element". Because the bridge is not on an official State maintained route, the City of Knoxville will be responsible for repairs. Until the closure, the bridge had passed every annual inspection by TDOT since the 2004 refurbishment. On February 12, 2025, the City of Knoxville announced that The Gay Street Bridge would not re-open to vehicle traffic and would instead continue its life as a pedestrian and cycle bridge. In the same press conference, Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon said that the city will investigate the possibility of the bridge being re-opened to Knoxville Area Transit busses and emergency services in the future.

Description

History

Previous bridges

Planning and construction

Operation

Closure

See also

References

Further reading