Old Wells Street Bridge

Information and Findings From DHPA Historic Bridge Survey

Statement of Significance

This truss is unusually heavy and its original members largely intact. Employing a pierced nameplate, latticed guardrails for each sidewalk, and unusual endpost decoration to supplement decorative portal latticing and artistic bracing, the prolific Ohio company called public attention to its structure.
The Wells Street Bridge is significant as one of two surviving iron bridges in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Specifically, Allen County #541, a Whipple truss bridge, is an unusual example of a significant truss type. The structure is significant for its heavy construction, flanking sidewalks and high level of detail, all of which reflect the urban function of the bridge. Allen County #541 is also important locally as the work of a well-known Fort Wayne engineer, Alvin John Stewart.

Though Fort Wayne began as a military outpost at the strategic point where the St. Mary's and St. Joseph join to form the Maumee River, its growth as a city was not long constrained by the number of waterways to be crossed in order that development could occur to the north, east, and west of the former fort site, which became the center of the new town by the 1840s. One of the earliest spans, reputedly the city's first iron bridge, was built on the future site of the Wells Street Bridge in 1859, to provide access to the Bloomingdale neighborhood. By the time that early structure was replaced by the present one in 1884, a neighborhood commercial area had grown up along Wells Street to the north of the bridge. The availability of this crossing from the downtown probably also influenced the decision of the Lake Shore and Western Railroad to build its depot near the bridge, on Cass Street (where it still stands) in 1888. The Wells Street Bridge proved to be the first of a series of new iron bridges built in the city during that era: bridges of similar design and decoration were built on Spy Run (1888), Main Street (c. 1890), and Columbia Avenue (1891). Though the later growth of the city came to include what had been country bridges on Anthony Boulevard (1896), Hale Street (1882), and Bluffton Road (1895), today only the Wells Street and Hale Street bridges survive, The Wells Street Bridge is significant as an unusual example of an important historic metal bridge type, the Whipple truss. The Whipple truss was designed as an improvement over the older Pratt truss. Squire Whipple, who was internationally recognized for his bridge designs, created the Whipple truss in 1846 by merely extending diagonal web members across two panels instead of one panel. According to Carl Condit, this single variation more evenly distributed stress and greatly improved the strength of the truss, allowing iron bridges to carry heavier loads across longer spans. (Carl Condit, American Building, 98-99.) From 1865 to 1885, the Whipple was the favorite of engineers for long spans.
The Pratt truss is more commonly used on Indiana's iron bridges. Over 350 Pratt truss bridges remain in Indiana, while only 30 Whipple truss spans exist in the state. The Wells Street Bridge received the sixth highest rating of all Whipple trusses in the state by the Indiana bridge survey.

The Wells Street Bridge is significant within these surviving Whipple truss bridges, as James Cooper explains in Iron Monuments to Distant Posterity, Indiana's Metal Bridges, 1810-1930: Two of the Wrought Iron Company's nine standard Whipple trusses merit specific note. Built for city traffic in 1883-1884, Allen County #541 is the oldest, heaviest, and most decorated. Its intermediate verticals are made from four of the largest sizes of channels. Pairs of the heaviest die-forged rectangular eyebars supply the diagonals, and the struts, portals, and bracing are all reinforced and artistically designed. (64)

Clearly, the Wells Street Bridge is significant as an unusually heavy-duty and profusely decorated urban iron bridge. The Wells Street Bridge was erected by Alvin John Stewart, a native of Harpersfield, New York who came to nearby Bluffton, in Wells County, in 1871. Steward was then employed as roadmaster by three railroads, including one then being built through Bluffton and Fort Wayne, the Lake Erie and Western. In his capacity as roadmaster, Stewart was responsible for all buildings and structures located along the rail lines he served. Though an 1887 biography noted that he was responsible for the design of railroad buildings in Missouri, Illinois, Texas, and Michigan, as well as Indiana, starting in 1859, the only other extant structures with which he can be clearly associated are two houses in Bluffton: his own 1882 residence (the Stewart-Studebaker House, listed in the National Register May 14, 1979), and the home of his son-in-law, Amos G. King (included in the Villa North Historic District, listed in the National Register June 4, 1985), built in 1894. The Wells Street Bridge provides tangible evidence that in addition to his railroad duties, Stewart was also active as an independent contractor. The possibility that Stewart may also have been responsible for at least one more Fort Wayne structure, the 1888 Spy Run Bridge, is raised by the similarities of detail shared by the two designs, even though the latter was made by a different fabricator, the Massillon Bridge Company of Massillon, Ohio. Whether the similarities actually point to Stewart's involvement, or represent a connection between that manufacturer and the Wrought Iron Bridge Company of Canton, Ohio, maker of the Wells Street Bridge, only further primary research and the identification of additional works may reveal.

Unlike many of Indiana's metal spans, the future of the Wells Street Bridge is quite favorable. The bridge was closed to vehicular traffic in 1982, when it was replaced by a new span located one-half mile to the west. Current plans call for the incorporation of the bridge into a river-front park as a pedestrian walkway.

Architectural Description

Fabricated by the Wrought Iron Bridge Company of Canton, Ohio, this double-intersection Pratt (Whipple) through truss may have been erected under the eye of N. Goshorn, Allen County Engineer. It still stands upon its original cut stone abutments and wingwalls. The single span of 180' is carried by endposts and top chords of fabricated heavy channels and cover plate and is subdivided into fifteen panels by intermediate verticals constructed from four sizes of laced heavy channels (decreasing in size toward center span) riveted to reinforcing pin plates above and below. Double cylindrical eyebars with turnbuckles stretch diagonally outwards from the five central pins; die-forged double rectangular eyebars form the other diagonals. Double U-bolted to pins, girder floor beams stretch beyond the lower chord on each side to provide external sidewalks and internally support an asphalt-over-timber deck which carries a 23' roadway with 15'7" of vertical clearance.

Bridge Considered Historic By Survey: Yes