Tuttle Bridge finally to be replacedBy Bill Sample
12:00AM / Thursday, July 29, 2004
 | | The Tuttle Bridge has carried Golden Hill Road over the Housatonic River in Lee for more than 119 years. The historic bridge will be dismantled and sent to UMass for study by engineering students and eventually re-use as a footbridge there. |
LEE – The Tuttle Bridge, which has carried Golden Hill Road over the Housatonic River since 1885, has finally been approved for dismantling after nearly nine years of waiting and will be replaced by $1.3 million steel-span structure.
The old iron bridge will be shipped to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for refurbishing and reconstruction and will be put to use as a footbridge on campus as part of the Adaptive Use Bridge Project of that school’s engineering department. The historic and rare wrought-iron lenticular or “pony” truss bridge has been closed to vehicular traffic since February 1996, when state bridge inspectors performing x-ray testing found the bridge unsafe for modern traffic.
The new single-span prefabricated steel bridge will be slightly wider and longer than the original. The state Highway Department awarded the contract for construction of the new bridge to J.H. Maxymillian Co. of Pittsfield, on March 10 this year. A notice to begin work was filed on April 12, and Maxymillian crews actually began work at the site on May 25.
Charles Flint, of Lenox, a long time resident on Golden Hill Road, said, “It’s a very good thing they decided to replace that bridge. When they closed it, the neighborhood was severed into two parts. It was really inconvenient to have to drive way around to visit someone who lived close by.”
Flint, an antiques dealer, indicated he was pleased that the historic structure would be refurbished and used by the university.
“Saving it and sending it to UMass is a great idea. To preserve it for historic purposes and to let engineering students study it and the public use it as a footbridge is wonderful,” he said.
The bridge is one of four in the state that will eventually be rebuilt and set up at the UMass Amherst campus, allowing students in the civil and environmental engineering department to design their reuse as pedestrian bridges on campus. Two of the others are in the eastern part of the state, and the fourth is the long-closed Galvin Road Bridge in North Adams.
Lee Town Administrator Bob Mason said the project took a long time to come to fruition because the bridge is listed in the state register of historic places.
“The Lee historical Commission brought this to the town’s attention, and we have been working on this since 1998,” he said. “We have had public meetings on the subject at Town Hall, and those who came forward to speak at those meetings were all in favor of allowing UMass to put the bridge into their program. Working out the details of this complicated agreement delayed the process somewhat.”
Mass Highway District 1 Director Ross B. Dindio said the bridge replacement project is scheduled for completion in the spring of 2005, but due to other complications, that time period will remain flexible.
“There is a water main for the town of Lee that goes under the river right where that bridge is,” Dindio said. “The contractor will have to erect a temporary utility structure across the river and reroute the water main temporarily so they can dismantle the old bridge and erect the new one without interrupting water service to the neighborhood.”
Once the new bridge is in place, the water main will be permanently attached to the south side of the bridge, making it unnecessary to rebury the main under the riverbed, he said, adding that necessary permits for the work in the waterway have been obtained from the appropriate local, state and federal agencies.
J.H. Maxymillian Corp. of Pittsfield was the low bidder on the project at $1,350,622. The Highway Department awarded the contract after opening the sealed bids at the department’s weekly public meeting in Boston on March 9. |
