The New London Black Heritage Trail was honored as a History Gamechanger Project by Connecticut Explored in 2022.Disclosure: This article may contain affiliate links. We also chat with Nicole Thomas, who works for Connecticut Landmarks as the Assistant Site Administrator at the Hempsted Houses Museum and is also a researcher for New London’s Black Heritage Trail. At each stop, events and campfires are held to explore with the public the way the history of the enslaved has been told. In Connecticut, he has slept at buildings owned by the Historical Society and in New London at the Hempstead Houses owned by Connecticut Landmarks. began a groundbreaking project to sleep overnight in the countless and very underappreciated former slave dwellings that still stand across the country. We talk with Joseph McGill,Jr., author of "Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery." A Black historic preservationist and Civil War reenactor based in South Carolina, McGill Jr. New Grating the Nutmeg Podcast out today! Stream: /GTN175 “ Carry Me Across the Water: Connecticut’s Historic Bridges,” Summer 2015 This article is based on numerous unpublished bridge documentation projects by the author, prepared to state or federal standards.Ĭonnecticut Explored received support for this publication from the State Historic Preservation Office of the Department of Economic and Community Development with funds from the Community Investment Act of the State of Connecticut. Raber, Ph.D., of Raber Associates, is a consultant in industrial history and cultural resource management. A contributor to the North Stonington Village Historic District’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places, it was destroyed by a flood in 2010 and replaced in 2011 by this single-arch concrete bridge faced with stones from the earlier structure. The original bridge was a double-arch stone structure, built c. photo: Wengell, McDonnell & Costello, Inc., PE Summary Report for the Rehabilitation of West Village Green Bridge, North Stonington, Connecticut. Old Town Hall Bridge, North Stonington, 2011. For some projects with special historic preservation values, original stones from masonry arches and spandrels are still attached to concrete arches.īelow are several prime examples of both true stone arch and rusticated stone-faced reinforced concrete bridges in Connecticut-some extant and since demolished. The appeal of rustication lives on, and since the 1990s a new method, known as formliner, has seen the use of concrete forms mimicking ashlar and rubble masonry. The widespread use of stone facing between the two world wars shows the strong preference in that period for rusticated arched surfaces. Stone facing was also applied to some concrete-slab and steel-girder spans. Most are actually concrete arches or arched-concrete girders with stone facing. Notable exceptions include Hartford’s nine-span Bulkeley Bridge completed across the Connecticut River in 1908. Most 20th-century bridges that look like true stone-arch construction are not. The principal skills needed to build a stone-arch bridge-masons and materials-were usually available locally, and it was rare to see designs by professional engineers before the very late 19th century. These vertical loads must be countered by the abutments at each end of the bridge, among other structural components. Those that were built were valued for their picturesque quality and, in less urbanized locations, their closer resemblance to a natural feature than an unfinished concrete structure.Īrch construction is based on placement of wedge-shaped stones, or voussoirs, in a ring that compresses under vertical loads. With the widespread adoption of reinforced concrete bridges by the early 20th century, few new stone-arch bridges were built thereafter. This was because, in some situations, stone arches were perceived as stronger than metal trusses in flood-prone locations, especially below mill dams. After about 1880 metal-truss bridges gained increasing appeal, but stone-arch bridges remained a viable, if less frequently chosen, alternative for several more decades. The growth of urban centers and some severe weather events increased preferences for stone arch bridges throughout the state from about 1869 until the very end of the 19th century. Masonry-arch bridge construction is an ancient design, but the form was not common in Connecticut until the mid-19th century, due to a preference for cheaper timber crossings.
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