Gladesville Bridge

About

Gladesville Bridge is a heritage-listed concrete arch road bridge that carries Victoria Road over the Parramatta River, linking the Sydney suburbs of Drummoyne and Huntleys Point, in the local government areas of Canada Bay and Hunter's Hill respectively, in New South Wales, Australia. Despite its name, the bridge is not in Gladesville. The Gladesville Bridge is a few kilometres upstream of the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge. When it was completed in 1964, Gladesville Bridge was the longest single span concrete arch ever constructed. Gladesville Bridge is the largest of a complex of three bridges, including Fig Tree Bridge and Tarban Creek Bridge, designed to carry traffic as part of the North Western Expressway. The bridge was the first phase of this freeway project that was to connect traffic from the Newcastle via Wahroonga/Lane Cove, then through Glebe/Annandale to connect into the city. Due to community action the freeway project was abandoned by the Wran Government in 1977, leaving the Gladesville Bridge connecting the existing arterial roads. The Gladesville Bridge was designed by Anthony Gee, G. Maunsell & Partners and Eugène Freyssinet and built from 1959 to 1964 by Reed & Mallik (Engineers, England) and Stuart Bros (Builders, Sydney). The property is owned by Transport for NSW. The bridge was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 1 October 2014. Europeans first settled in the Gladesville/Drummoyne area of Sydney soon after landfall at Sydney Cove. In the 1790s, Crown grants of 12-hectare (30-acre) lots were made available in the vicinity of Gladesville to encourage agricultural pursuits in the area. The future suburb of Gladesville remained isolated and rural until the 1850s when the earlier land grants were subdivided into large urban building blocks for the development of 'gentlemen's residences' for the wealthier colonists of NSW.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.