SightSinging

By SightSinging

Fairfield Bridge in Hamilton, New Zealand

Every 6 weeks we keep an appointment with our hairdresser for haircuts and just opposite his establishment is this landmark spanning the Waikato River. It is a tied-arch bridge ,  one of six bridges in the city.
It was registered as a Category I 'Historic Place' with the New Zealand Historic Places Trust on 30 August 1990.
Wikipedia says...
The bridge is 139 metres (457 ft) long, and has two land spans,[5] and three arches which are 70 centimetres (28 in) wide, and 7.9 metres (26 ft) above the road at their highest point.[6] The arches and spans are made from reinforced concrete.It was designed by Stanley Jones of Auckland, and Roose Shipping started construction in August 1934.The bridge was opened in April 1937 by the Minister of Public Works Bob Semple.
When the building of a bridge in the Fairfield suburb was proposed, many people felt that it would seldom be used. Sixty-five years later, in 2002, there were about 20,000 vehicles travelling across the bridge each day.
During the building of foundations for the bridges, an excavator came across a burial cave in the bank of the river. The preserved heads of several Māori were found in it. In 1991 a reconstruction project costing NZ$1.1 million took place, as the bridge was suffering the effects of concrete cancer, discovered in 1980.

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