Henszey's Wrought Iron Arch Bridge
Near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
The bowstring arch truss bridge now carrying pedestrian traffic at Summerdale has traveled quite a distance to get here. Joseph G. Henszey patented the wrought iron bowstring arch design in eighteen sixty-nine, and the Continental Bridge Company of Philadelphia built this specimen that same year.
It originally crossed Trout Creek in Slatington in Lehigh County, part of a wave of iron bridge construction that followed the Civil War as engineers sought stronger and more durable crossings than wood could provide. In nineteen hundred the bridge was picked up and relocated to span Ontelaunee Creek at Wanamaker, still carrying vehicle traffic. Then in two thousand two it moved again, to Summerdale, where it was repurposed for pedestrians.
It is an early and well-documented example of the wrought iron bowstring arch, a form that shaped American bridge engineering in the decades after the Civil War.
