Eagle Avenue Bridge

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The seemingly-endless series of Cleveland bridge photos continues with a few of the Eagle Avenue Bridge, which crosses a bend of the Cuyahoga River near the city's downtown. You might notice something's missing here, namely the Eagle Avenue the bridge is supposed to carry. The road used to be on a raised viaduct as it approached the bridge, but in 2005 the viaduct was judged to be in poor structural condition and was demolished. The bridge itself was abandoned in place, in the open position. As far as I've seen, there are no immediate plans to do anything with the old bridge, but leaving it there lets the city keep its future options open.

Various items about the bridge, from across the interwebs:

• Two photos by Flickr user C Hanchey giving a closer view of the bridge.
• A post at UrbanOhio about the history of the area in the 19th and early 20th centuries, including a curious short-lived device called "Smead's Rolling Road", a sort of escalator for horse-drawn carts.
• Cleveland Magazine published a "How Cleveland Are You?" quiz several years ago. One of the items mentions the Eagle Ave. Bridge in passing; apparently the crazy tight turn in the river here (see the map, above) is known as "Collision Bend". As a non-Clevelander, I only got two points on the quiz. One for knowing that rivers are supposed to flow north (because of the Willamette, though), and one for riding the Rapid to something other than a sporting event, while sober. And on the second point, technically I did stop off and hit a brewpub for lunch, but I feel I deserve that quiz point anyway.
• In 2010 there was some talk of rerouting the river away from Collision Bend, to make room for a proposed casino (!). I'm not sure if that proposal's still in the works or what became of it.
• The bridge's HistoricBridges.org page
• And its Bridgehunter page.