Bridges to 15th and 14th streets over Bagely

[mcsdetroitfriend]

Anyone know when and why the bridges connecting 15th and 14th streets over the railroad tracks were removed? Looking at the DTE Ariel shots [[though there is a gap between 1961 and 1981) it happened sometime in those 20 years.

[laphoque]

I guess USPS needed a parking lot for their semis? http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&hq=&...45.85,,0,-1.41

Unless that was already there in your ariel shots.

[DetroitPlanner]

I'm sitting here with my dad who worked for the Detroit DPW during that time frame. He says it was probably closer to 1981 because thats about the time the bridge for the railroad was built. I did not pay attention to that stuff that far back as I was probably about 12-14.

[DetroitHabitater]

that 15th street connector was built really crappily whenever. It does not seem to be a road with MDOT standards,

[EastsideAl]

I remember those bridges well. When I was a little kid in the '60s I was crazy about trains and my dad used to take me over there on those bridges to look at them. I remember that you used to be able to very clearly see the entrance to the rail tunnel to Windsor from the old Porter St. bridge, which is now gone too.

All of the bridges over those tracks there were old, narrow, and in really bad shape by then. Many of them were closed by the mid-70s and torn down some years thereafter. 14th St. was once a major one-way thoroughfare [[paired with 12th St.) here, but 12th St. south of Michigan Ave. was rebuilt as a 2-way boulevard at about this time [[and the whole street was renamed as Rosa Parks) and the 14th St. bridge was closed. The Bagley bridge was closed for a few years, and was eventually rebuilt, without the weird little 15th St. bridge that once connected to it, sometime around 1980 as stated above.