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Lost Bridge: Flindon Road bridge

Well, does the QEW look like a Depression-era highway? After all, it is. The Depression was, in fact, noted for being the initiation of a semi-command economy in North America. One of its hallmarks is the use of construction projects to enhance infrastructure as a means of redistribution of wealth, and this was particularly true in rural areas which were the hardest hit (the best example I can think of is the Tennessee Valley Authority project). Yes, that looks very much to me like a Depression-era bridge, or later, and not much like a road bridge predating the First World War.

What I was asking about, in conjunction with your statement, were hints as to the specific details about the bridge you'd noticed that typify the era of which you're suggestion it's characteristic. For example, the warning stripes on the edges of the bridge date to a standard adopted, if I'm not mistaken, in 1935. Now that doesn't mean the bridge isn't older than that (the stripes could, of course, have been applied later), but it is at least an indication of some kind of dating the bridge. That's the sort of detail I expected you were drawing your conclusions from.

Er...actually, I think it's fairly self-evident that the stripes would have been applied later, as a matter of course, to this and most any other such older truss bridge which was still operational in a post-1935 era.

As far as "specific details" goes, it's in such things as the kind of truss it is, the scale of the members, the bridge railings, the portal-framed transverses etc. By the 1930s or later, this kind of construction would have been too flimsy for even "minor" road traffic--and at the same time, it's too "thought-out" to be a Bailey-type temp structure. It registers as something older and more "permanent" (for a pre-mass-motoring age) in intent.

You seem to be under this impression that metal truss road bridges scarcely existed before the depression. Browse this database; check the dates, check the truss details, check matters like style and scale (by the 30s, we'd be talking more sober, sturdy and severe), and compare with Flindon. True, it's an American database, but it isn't like rural Southern Ontario was that much more backward--you're reading too much into certain wooden crossings and gaps in the grid. Sure, cases like this might not conform to the textbook historical geographic narrative of Rural Southern Ontario; but it's because you're reading the textbook too narrowly. (That's where "spot research" comes in.)

Though I could also understand how one can be deceived, because road trusses like this are exotically rare today--and where they've survived, they're subject to extreme weight restrictions or retired into bike/pedway crossings, or just abandoned, often too remote to "register" in the public imagination. (Had Flindon lasted another couple of decades, there'd probably have been a rally to save it as a piece of engineering heritage.)

Lone Primate, you may have your textbook history down pat; but as an informed visual judge and dater of bridge engineering, you leave a lot to be desired...
 
Lone Primate, you may have your textbook history down pat; but as an informed visual judge and dater of bridge engineering, you leave a lot to be desired...

Bet you're a big Lee Marvin fan, aren't you? Me too! ;)
 
Sorry for bringing back a thread from the dead, but I had a new thought on this.

I always wondered, when I was looking at the new Albion bridge, why they not only built it beside the old Albion bridge, but also at a new angle, which requires a rather sharp curve (for a 60 km/h street) on the Etobicoke side.

Then, I was looking into the "Wilson Avenue Extension" proposed in the '70s. While I couldn't find any drawings or route information, I did find that the city eventually (in the '90s) divested themselves of land on the North side of Bergamot that was reported to be for the Wilson extension. So that makes me think that maybe the Wilson extension plans looked something like this:
comparison.jpg


Does anyone have any information about the Wilson Ave Extension to confirm/deny this?
 

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Then, I was looking into the "Wilson Avenue Extension" proposed in the '70s.

Now that is interesting. Somebody told me at some point a while ago that Bergamot Avenue had been originally earmarked to bring Sheppard down to tie it up to Rexdale Bvld and make it contiguous through Derry Road onward. I honestly have no idea if that's really the case, but I suppose anything even fathomable is possible. Your suggestion also looks intriguing, and, I have to admit, more plausible than the Sheppard idea. Though given that Albion and Wilson already cross the Humber, I'd personally consider a Sheppard link to furnish greater utility. That said, I don't really imagine they'll ever do either of the kind. Bergamot is just too residential.

It's funny coming back to this thread after so long. Not long ago I actually looked again, with more experienced eyes, at some photos James Salmon took in October 1954, and I realize now there had previously been an Albion Road bridge on that site (that is, where the "old", now pedestrian, bridge is today). It was destroyed by Hurricane Hazel while, by some miracle, Flindon Road bridge wasn't, and for a time it had to assume the traffic Albion Road's bridge used to handle. But I think the question of whether there had been an earlier bridge there or just two roughed-in approaches to where one would one day be has been settled for me.
 
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Then, I was looking into the "Wilson Avenue Extension" proposed in the '70s. While I couldn't find any drawings or route information, I did find that the city eventually (in the '90s) divested themselves of land on the North side of Bergamot that was reported to be for the Wilson extension. So that makes me think that maybe the Wilson extension plans looked something like this:
View attachment 8620

Does anyone have any information about the Wilson Ave Extension to confirm/deny this?

Toronto Star Sept 28, 1971

Council fights pushing road through park
Etobicoke council voted last night to ask Metro to stop work on the west extension of Wilson Ave., which now ends at Weston Rd.
Metro plans to push it west to join Albion Rd., cross a bridge over the Humber River and proceed to Bergamot Ave.
"This is quite unnecessary." said Alderman John Hanna. "They are planning to build the road right through the Elms Park."
Council voted unanimously to request that construction on the extension be halted.
 
Then, I was looking into the "Wilson Avenue Extension" proposed in the '70s. While I couldn't find any drawings or route information, I did find that the city eventually (in the '90s) divested themselves of land on the North side of Bergamot that was reported to be for the Wilson extension. So that makes me think that maybe the Wilson extension plans looked something like this:
View attachment 8620

Does anyone have any information about the Wilson Ave Extension to confirm/deny this?

I reckon it may have been more of a Kingston/Danforth split kind of plan--which excused the retention of the old bridge as well as the different alignment of the new bridge...
 
Toronto Star Sept 28, 1971

Council fights pushing road through park
Etobicoke council voted last night to ask Metro to stop work on the west extension of Wilson Ave., which now ends at Weston Rd.
Metro plans to push it west to join Albion Rd., cross a bridge over the Humber River and proceed to Bergamot Ave.
"This is quite unnecessary." said Alderman John Hanna. "They are planning to build the road right through the Elms Park."
Council voted unanimously to request that construction on the extension be halted.

Wow, thanks for digging that up. Dates even make sense with when the new bridge was built, and the alignment of the lanes on it.
 
I reckon it may have been more of a Kingston/Danforth split kind of plan--which excused the retention of the old bridge as well as the different alignment of the new bridge...

Oh, hey, yeah, that does make sense, especially when you put it that way. I couldn't see the point of the paired bridges until you said that. Which is weird because we just saw a graphic of that a couple of days ago and it just didn't dawn on me that one bridge would do the Albion Road work and the other the Wilson extension work.

Well, I'm ambivalent about the cancellation. It's nice the park survived but there's a part of me that always wants to sew up the gaps in the road network.

Guess what I head about a proposed Sheppard extension was just smoke!
 
Sometime after 1970 (when it doesn't yet appear in aerial shots) and 1975, the second bridge was built. Northbound traffic on Albion uses the old bridge, and southbound uses the new. It was to remain like that until sometime in the 1990s.
Hey, I know this is a very old thread but I was born in 1997 and I vividly remember traffic Albion Road diverging onto two bridges and then the construction that occurred to widen the south bridge. The pedestrianization of the north bridge therefore most likely occurred in the early 2000s.
 
Google earth satellite imagery from 2002 shows the old bridge extant, but unused. 1992 imagery shows it in use. I'm not sure where to source satellite imagery between those two dates, so it happened sometime between the two.

Given the condition of the roadway in the 2002 imagery, my guess is that it was done sometime in the very late 1990's. Perhaps 1999 or early in 2000.
 
Some answers to various questions in this thread here
 

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