1896-2012 Sugar Creek Chapel Bridge

(Bridge Hunter; Historic Bridges; Satellite)

Eric Schmidt posted five photos with the comment:

Located in southeastern Iroquois County, the Sugar Creek Chapel Bridge has a cool history. It was built in 1895 from steel salvaged from the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. The beams were originally part of the dome of the Administrative Building and one still has the Carnegie Steel stamp visible. It was closed to traffic in 2012.

Eric Schmidt Found this on a bridge website.[Historic Bridges]..The superstructure of this bridge is anything but usual. Strictly speaking, the bridge is an example of an uncommon bridge type, a steel through arch, a structure type usually reserved for spans far longer than the Sugar Creek Chapel Bridge. However, this arch bridge immediately lets anyone who looks at it that this bridge is something unusual. The bridge does not have a traditional smooth, arched shape. Instead, the center of the arch angles downward, giving the bridge a spider-like appearance, or as a newspaper article described it, a cupid's bow appearance. The shape makes it look like one of those bridges which shouldn't even be standing. Another feature that makes the bridge look weird is how the arch's rib gets increasingly shallow towards the center of the bridge. It is these features that makes the bridge so unusual, and make the bridge technologically significant as an unusual form of bridge construction. The arch of the bridge passes below the deck and is planted in the ground in front of stone abutments that may be from a previous bridge. Only the deck stringers are visibly seated on these stone abutments. Another interesting feature on this bridge is the sway bracing (struts), which is latticed and features an attractive arch to it. The braced rib arches (also sometimes called trussed arches) follow a lattice design as well, and essentially act as subdivided double-intersection Warren trusses. The connections on this truss work are riveted. Field bolts can be found on the various sections of the bridge where they were attached.

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Eric commented on his post

Samantha Rinehart commented on Eric's post
Pic of my youngest sister and I before they closed the bridge

Gene Smania comment on Bridge Hunters
Photos taken ca February 2010. Structure is load posted.
[Others have also added photos in the comments.]

Gene Smania commented on Bridge Hunters
Here's an article from the Kankakee Daily Journal that appeared on October 19, 1992 concerning the structure.

Continuation of newspaper comment