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