Summer Street Retractile Bridge, Spanning Fort Point Channel at Summer Street, Boston, Suffolk County, MA

Significance: The Summer St. bridge is a rare movable type of bridge known as a retractile draw, in which the moving span is pulled diagonally away from the navigable channel on several sets of rails. Only four of these have been identified in the country, two of which are on Summer St. in Boston. The form is thought to have been invented by T. Willis Pratt in the 1860's. This bridge is a double retractile: parallel spans pull away from the center in opposite directions. Despite its deteriorating condition, the bridge is the center element of the rich Fort Point Channel Bridge District. / The Summer Street Retractile Bridge is the only known surviving electrically-operated, paired-leaf oblique retractile drawbridge. Despite its poor condition and loss of much of its operating equipment and auxiliary structures (gates, Tender's House, and pedestrian waiting shelters), several of the early components (superstructure, retractile rails, wheels, and operating machinery on the south side) remain. The Summer Street Retractile Bridge is one of five surviving movable bridges located in the proposed Fort Point Channel Historic District. It is one of eight known remaining nineteenth-century movable bridges in the Massachusetts Highway Department Historic Bridge Survey.

Survey number: HAER MA-41

Building/structure dates: 1899 Initial Construction

Building/structure dates: 1918 Subsequent Work

Building/structure dates: 1931 Subsequent Work

Building/structure dates: 1954 Subsequent Work

Building/structure dates: 1969-1970 Subsequent Work

Building/structure dates: 1990 Subsequent Work

Building/structure dates: 1939 Subsequent Work

Building/structure dates: 1967 Subsequent Work

Building/structure dates: 1975-1976 Subsequent Work

Building/structure dates: 1984-1989 Subsequent Work

movable bridges civil engineering bridge construction vehicular bridges steel truss bridges boston summer retractile bridge summer street retractile bridge channel fort point channel summer street suffolk suffolk county massachusetts john e cheney dan clement historic american engineering record william jackson jet lowe mcginley hart and associates lauren meyer seelye stevenson value and knecht peter stott martin stupich photo ultra high resolution high resolution infrastructure cityscape library of congress

1969 - 1980

Library of Congress

http://www.loc.gov/

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