page_title: Alte Brücke (Frankfurt)
section_title: 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: Alte Brücke (Frankfurt) / History / 19th century
context_page_description: Alte Brücke is a bridge in Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany. It is the oldest bridge over the lower course of the river Main, and until 1886 it was the only stone bridge crossing the river. From the Middle Ages until the year 1914, it connected the "Fahrgasse" in Frankfurt Altstadt with the "Brückenstraße" in Sachsenhausen. Since its first mention in official documents in 1222, the development of Frankfurt has been strongly influenced by the bridge. Over the centuries, Alte Brücke has been destroyed and reconstructed at least 18 times. With its 13 brick-built circular arches, the Sachsenhausen Bridge was one of the most prominent buildings of the city, but failing to meet the increasing demands of the modern road and ship traffic, it was demolished in 1914.
  The current Alte Brücke, sometimes called "Neue Alte Brücke", was inaugurated on 15 August 1926 by then-Lord-Mayor Ludwig Landmann. Two of its originally eight red sandstone-lined vaults were blown up by German soldiers on 26 March 1945. After an initial provisional reconstruction, the middle part of the bridge was replaced by a steel through truss bridge and placed in operation again on 15 September 1965.
context_section_description: Unchanged by the rebuilding, the bridge still had a disadvantageous proportion of the opening width of the arches (172.17 m) compared to the complete bridge length of 264.87 metres. This caused ice jams upstream of the bridge in almost every winter. As an attempt to solve the problem, ice breakers had been added to the bridge pillars, but these turned out to be a collision danger for passing ships and were subsequently removed. Further complicating the situation, the small, long arch passages stood slightly angular to the direction of the water current, causing strong turbulences. Kolks and underminings lead to recurring damage to the bridge. Reports of the city construction manager Johann Friedrich Christian Hess from the years 1816 to 1844 noted the desolate state of the bridge pillars, and mentioned cracks with sizes up to 10 inches (0.25 m) each. Maintenance attempts of the persistently damaged bridge in the years 1825 to 1859 caused construction costs of about 230,000 Guilders.
  In 1848, a second bridge, the Main-Neckar Railway, was built over the Main. In 1869, the "Eiserner Steg", a pedestrian bridge, followed. Nevertheless, the Main bridge, now called the "Alte Brücke" (old bridge), turned out to be unsuitable to meet the rising demand caused by increasing amounts of street traffic. Since 1859, there had been plans to increase the width of the bridge. In 1865, first plans for a complete reconstruction with 8 instead of 13 arches, and a bridge width of 14 m, have been made. These plans even included a possible removal of the Main island.
  When the Free City of Frankfurt was annexed by Preußen in 1866, the bridge became property of the Prussian state. The reconstruction plans were temporarily paused; instead of a reconstruction of the Alte Brücke, new two bridges were built: The "Untermainbrücke", downstream, in 1874 and the "Obermainbrücke", upstream, in 1878. The latter bridge is named "Ignatz-Bubis-Brücke" as of today. In the 1880s, the Main was channelized, increasing the water level by about two metres. Between 1908 and 1910, the "Osthafen" (east harbour) emerged. Now, at the latest, the Alte Brücke had become a traffic impediment for the number of ships passing through the bridge.
  Encouraged by a consortium from Offenbach, consisting of Weintraut (Councillor of Commerce), Weymann (banker) and the Merzbach Bank, a tram way was built. The construction was finished by the Frankfurt-Offenbacher Trambahn-Gesellschaft (FOTG) on 18 Februar 1884, and the route went from Alte Brücke (Sachsenhausen) to the "Buchrainstraße" in Oberrad. It was the first commercially maintained, public electrical tramway in Germany. About two months later, on 10 April 1884, the tramway was extended up to the "Mathildenplatz" in Offenbach. Back then, the FOTG used a track gauge of 1000 mm ("Metre-gauge railway").
caption: Alte Brücke around 1885
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