Senator Claiborne Pell in , but most people still refer to it by its original name. The bridge spans 11, feet, making it one of the longest suspension bridges in the world.
And since about 27, vehicles pass over it every day, it's safe to say it's essential to our state. On any given day, you'll probably notice a photographer or two in the area. Rhode Island In Your Inbox spinner. Bartholomewtown Podcast: Are you entitled to rent relief? Bartholomewtown Podcast: Bill speaks with legendary sports anchor Frank Carpano.
Now Week Month. Local The Buzz. Type to search or hit ESC to close. See all results. Remember Me. Sign In. Enter username or email. The Newport Bridge would be his signature bridge project. Construction of the approach piers began on April 5, , and work on the tower piers and anchorages began one month later. Creating the foundations for the tower piers and anchorages was an arduous task. More than steel piles had to be driven down to bedrock.
Some piles were dug as much as feet below the water's surface, which still is a record for pile driving. When divers began to cut off the tops of the piles, they found that they could only stay down for 30 minutes before returning to the surface.
A diving tank was sent to the bridge site, and the divers' productivity went from one pile a day to 15 piles a day. Once the steel piles were set, prefabricated forms were sent by barge to the site. The largest of these forms weighed tons and stood ten stories high. To remove these forms from the barges and set them in place, engineers used a foot vessel called the Avondale Senior , which had twin booms that could handle tons.
Two powerful storms wreaked havoc with the forms, so engineers had to straighten the forms before concrete could be poured for the two tower piers and the 52 other piers. The 90, cubic yards of concrete in the piers and anchorages - the largest amount of concrete ever poured underwater - were poured by the "tremie" method, a low-pressure procedure that involves pouring grout into a tremie tube.
Compared to traditional methods, the "tremie" method exerts less pressure on the pier walls when the concrete is being poured. At the time of the piers' erection in and , the Newport Bridge held the single-project construction record for the use of the "tremie" method. During the summer and fall of , workers erected the two foot-tall steel towers of the bridge. The streamlined towers and arched portals are reminiscent of those found on bridges designed by Othmar Ammann such as the Verrazano-Narrows, Bronx-Whitestone, Walt Whitman and Delaware Memorial bridges.
Workers complete pavement and electrical work on the Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge in this photo. This conventional cable-spinning process was repeated thousands of times. For the Newport span, Bethlehem Steel developed a new construction method that used prefabricated parallel wire strands. The two main cables, each of which measured just over 15 inches in diameter, were coated with a glass fiber-plastic protective casing.
Each of the bridge's main cables had 76 strands, and each strand had 61 wires each 0. Laid end to end, the wires would stretch for more than 8, miles. The cables weighed a total of 2, tons. This work continued from late through mid By late , workers began work on hoisting the roadway into place. Floating cranes hoisted the conventional steel truss sections on the main suspension span from Narragansett Bay.
The distance between towers is 1, feet, and at center span, the roadway provides a foot vertical clearance for ocean-bound vessels. On either side of the main suspension bridge, there are 11 deck-truss spans measuring a total of 3, feet; 15 girder spans measuring a total of 2, feet; feet of multi-girder spans and 2, feet of pre-stressed concrete beam spans.
The concrete deck is seven and one-half inches deep. Approximately 17, cubic yards of concrete were used to build the roadway deck.
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