TOMORROW'S ROADS TODAY - Maryland State Highway ...

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plate metal girder bridges. The next largest bridge type is also a metal girder type, the girder and
floorbeam system structures, of which there are seventeen. Thirteen rigid frame, eight slab and
eight Tee-beam are the most common reinforced concrete types found in Maryland. The box
beam or girder type can be either metal or concrete and there are twelve examples on state
highways, including the aluminum girder bridge on Old MD 32 over the CSX, River Road and
Patapsco River in Howard County. The preponderance of rolled or plate girder bridges on state
highways speaks to the practical ways in which the SRC made use of standardization to complete
the highway and bridge construction. A total of 286 bridges are on state primary and secondary
highways and have been evaluated as part of the present study. The remaining bridges are on the
Interstate system, and these have not been included in this study. While the SRC constructed
many bridges and highways between 1948 and 1965, that is not an exceptional event. During
this same period, other state Departments of Transportation such as Delaware, New Jersey,
Virginia, Nebraska, Tennessee, Oregon and California were constructing similar bridges and
highways in order to keep up with growing traffic on state highways. The steel beam and girder
bridges and reinforced concrete bridges constructed during this period by the SRC became a
common resource found on every highway in the state and in many other states as well. 4
Although most of Maryland’s Interstate Highway System was constructed during this
period, on March 10, 2005, the Federal Highway Administration and the Advisory Council on
Historic Preservation exempted these highways and bridges from Section 106 consideration
unless the structure or highway section has been identified as not meeting the exemption
requirements. On the interstates controlled by SHA, only the Sideling Hill Exhibit Center and
approximately one mile of I-68 between MP 73.5 and MP 74.5 in Washington County do not
meet the exemption. SHA controls twelve interstate highways throughout the state, and there are
presently 210 bridges on the system that have not been evaluated because they are not considered
eligible for inclusion in the NRHP. The remaining bridges are under the control of other state
agencies and were not evaluated as part of this study.
SHA Architectural Historian Anne E. Bruder conducted field visits in 2009 and 2010 to
view highways and bridges included in this study, reviewed photographs, developed written
descriptions of structures, and consider the impact of the highway construction between 1948
and 1965 on the state’s landscape.
Since 1998, SHA Architectural Historians have been evaluating state highway bridges for
inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) as they reached the fifty years of
age when these were included in SHA projects. Approximately forty-four bridges have been
evaluated and thirty-eight have been determined not eligible, while six have been determined
eligible. The Maryland Historical Trust (MHT) has concurred with these eligibility
recommendations (see Bridge Types and National Register of Historic Places Eligibility below).
4 See for example Delaware’s Historic Bridges, Survey and Evaluation of Historic Bridges with Historic Contexts
for Highways and Railroads, Lichtenstein Consulting Engineers (2000), Slab, Beam and Girder Bridges in Oregon,
Historic Context Statement, George S. Kramer (2004), and The Third Ohio Historic Bridge Inventory, Evaluation,
and Management Plan for Bridges Built 1951-1960 and the Development of Ohio’s Interstate Highway System, The
Ohio Department of Transportation (2004) and A Context for Common Historic Bridge Types, NCHRP Project 25-
25, Task 15, Parsons Brinckerhoff and Engineering and Industrial Heritage (2005). These are just a few examples of
post-World War II historic context reports prepared by various state Departments of Transportation.