The Kossuth Bridge or Kossuth híd was a

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 stood over the river

Danube The Danube ( ; see also #Names and etymology, other names) is the List of rivers of Europe#Longest rivers, second-longest river in Europe, after the Volga in Russia. It flows through Central and Southeastern Europe, from the Black Forest sou ...

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

from 15 January 1946 to 1960. After the

Soviet Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of Peop ...

took Budapest in early 1945, they found all the city's five bridges had been blown up by retreating German troops. (Árpád hid was not blown-up, it was just incomplete, under construction). Soon, a

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 ...

was created for military logistical purposes but its capacity proved insufficient and presence of winter icepacks on the Danube made it impossible to maintain a permanent link across the 290-metre-wide river with a floating bridge. A decision was made to build a spar-type bridge in record time. The total destruction of industry and lack of raw materials in

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

required cannibalizing several dozen oil wells in the oil fields of

Zala county Zala (, ; ; ) is an administrative county (Counties of Hungary, comitatus or ''vármegye'') in south-western Hungary. It is named after the Zala River. It shares borders with Croatia (Koprivnica–Križevci County, Koprivnica–Križevci and Me� ...

for the construction project. Steel piping was pulled from the depths and used as the main spars for the bridge. Some steel from gunbarrels from abandoned and destroyed World War II battle tanks were apparently incorporated in the structure. Because of the tight schedule and design restrictions dictated by available substandard materials, the bridge was built with numerous

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 ...

pylons, with smallish, 30 and 40-metre-wide openings between them. The design collective was led by engineers Elek Hilvert and Endre Misteth. The project management were done by Zsigmondy, Béla; Erdélyi and Vajda; and the Fábián, Somogyi and György companies. The top overseer, chief project manager was Széchy, Károly. The steel structure was manufactured by Weiss Manfréd Rt., and the Győri Waggongyár. The permanent link, built right at the southern corner of Budapest's Parliament Building, was often referred to as the "Link of Life", especially in the leftist press. Indeed, for six months - until 20 August 1946 - it was the only connection between the two halves of the city, Buda and Pest. Officially inaugurated as the "

Lajos Kossuth Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva (; ; ; ; 19 September 1802 – 20 March 1894) was a Hungarian nobleman, lawyer, journalist, politician, statesman and governor-president of the Kingdom of Hungary during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, r ...

Bridge", it was named after the patriot leader of Hungary's 1848–49 revolution. Due to its hasty construction, the Kossuth bridge had several restrictions on use. It was used mainly for pedestrian crossing. Heavier trucks could cross at 20 km/h and in only one direction at a time. During sessions of parliament, it was sometimes shut down for noise and security reasons. Both bus and truck traffic was on the bridge, numerous photographs and news film clips attest to that. In three years following World War II all of the demolished Danube bridges were rebuilt, except Elizabeth bridge, easing the traffic situation. The Kossuth Bridge gradually became a maintenance problem and its low span more of an obstacle to shipping on the River Danube. It was finally shut down in 1957 and dismantled in 1960, and not replaced. Nowadays only two plaques embedded in the riverbanks remind visitors of the bridge's former location.

External links

*A photo of the Kossuth bridge with Parliament in the background can be see
here

{{Coord, 47, 30, 20, N, 19, 2, 33, E, source:dewiki_region:HU-BU_type:landmark, format=dms, display=title Bridges in Budapest Bridges completed in 1945 Bridges over the Danube Demolished bridges