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    • Source: Congress Parkway Bridge

      • Congress Parkway Bridge, also known as Ida B. Wells Drive Bridge and officially named the Wagner Memorial Bridge, is a seven-lane bascule bridge crossing the South Branch Chicago River, providing an expressway connection between Interstate 290 (Eisenhower Expressway) and Ida B. Wells Drive/Wacker Drive. The bridge is located immediately to the east of a highway tunnel in the Old Post Office.


      History


      The bridge was first conceived by Daniel Burnham and Edward H. Bennett in the 1909 Plan of Chicago. The plan proposed Congress Street to be the main east–west boulevard in downtown and the West Side. City planners eventually opted for a superhighway instead of a boulevard by the 1920s; Bennett advocated for the superhighway to travel along Congress Street rather than Monroe Street, as some planners suggested.
      When the U.S. Post Office Department proposed an expansion of the Old Post Office in the late 1920s, the expansion would have physically blocked the proposed superhighway and the bridge approach. After negotiating with the Chicago Plan Commission and Edward Bennett, both of which opposed the expansion, the Post Office Department built a tunnel through the expanded structure for the future superhighway. The newly expanded building opened in 1932.
      In the 1940 Comprehensive Superhighway Plan, the city of Chicago designated the superhighway as its highest priority due to high traffic volume on the West Side; land acquisition and construction on the highway right of way began in 1949. The bridge itself began construction in 1950 and opened to traffic in 1956 at the cost of $5 million (equivalent to $56 million in 2023).
      On July 13, 1953, during the bridge's construction, the city council named the bridge in honor of the late 14th Ward Alderman Clarence P. Wagner, a powerful city politician who was killed in a car crash three days prior near International Falls, Minnesota.


      = Reconstruction

      =
      The bridge was first rehabilitated in 1981 to replace the steel bridge deck and adding Jersey barrier in place of a curb on the median.
      The bridge was rehabilitated for the second time from April 1, 2010, to May 15, 2012, as part of a $33 million project, which replaced the steel deck with a paved bridge surface and repaired the bridge structure.


      References




      External links


      Media related to Congress Parkway Bridge at Wikimedia Commons

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