Bridges

This visual sourcebook is an account of American bridge design, from familiar monuments to modest structures that offer eloquent statements of problems solved. It surveys American bridges from coast to coast in terms of four fundamental structural types (beam, arch, truss, and suspension) and the special category of movable bridges (swing, lift, and bascule), showing how similar structural ideas have been addressed by different designers, refined over time, and rendered in various building materials.
Nearly one thousand archival photographs, plans, drawings, and engravings, comprehensively captioned and with the Library of Congress call number for each image, make this book an invaluable reference for architects, engineers, preservationists, and everyone thrilled by a structural work of art.

Richard L. Cleary is associate professor and the Page Sourherland Page Fellow in the School of Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin.