Arrigoni Bridge

Travelers crossed the Connecticut River at Middletown by ferry from 1726 until 1896, when the Portland Passenger Bridge opened as what was said to be the longest highway drawbridge in the world. Motor traffic soon outgrew a crossing that stopped whenever a vessel passed, and flooding damaged the old span badly in 1936.

Its replacement, named for the legislator Charles J. Arrigoni, was completed in 1938 at a cost of $3.5 million, the most expensive bridge built in Connecticut to that date. Two steel through arches of 600 feet each, still the longest spans in the state, carry the roadway more than ninety feet above the water on chains of eyebars that tie the arches together and resist their outward thrust. The arches were erected outward from the center pier, each half balancing the other over open water. The American Institute of Steel Construction named it the most beautiful steel bridge of its class that same year.

The Arrigoni Bridge carries State Routes 66 and 17 across the Connecticut River between Middletown and Portland, Connecticut. ⁸ The steel through arch structure was completed in 1938 at a cost of $3.5 million, making it the most expensive bridge yet built in the state. It runs 3,428 feet in length, carried on two arches of 660 feet each, and stands more than ninety feet above the water. On the day it opened, it was the longest bridge of any kind in New England.

Crossing the River

The towns east of the Connecticut River were settled from Middletown, itself established in 1652. Portland and East Hampton, known jointly as Chatham until Portland separated in 1841, were carved from that original grant. For the better part of two centuries, the river could be crossed only by boat. Ferry service began at Middletown in 1726. ⁸

The first bridge over the river at Middletown was a swing truss span opened in 1872 to carry the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. Highway traffic waited another twenty-four years. The Portland Passenger Bridge, built by the Berlin Iron Bridge Company for $180,000, opened on April 12, 1896, and was said at the time to be the longest highway drawbridge in the world. ^{3 8} It measured 1,300 feet in length with a draw span of 450 feet, and it carried a roadway, an electric passenger car, and foot traffic, all of it subject to toll.

As motor traffic multiplied in the early decades of the twentieth century, drivers grew impatient with a crossing that halted whenever a vessel passed beneath. Studies for a replacement date to at least 1933, when the state knew the project as the State Route 346 Bridge. ⁵ Flooding in 1936 damaged the old drawbridge heavily. ⁴

Construction

Work on the new bridge began in 1936 and continued nearly around the clock. ⁸ It was named for Charles J. Arrigoni of Durham, the state legislator who had promoted the project. ² Arrigoni sat in the Connecticut House of Representatives from 1933 to 1936 and in the State Senate from 1937 to 1940.

The choice of large steel through arches, with the roadway suspended from them by cables, served several purposes at once. It opened wide channels for navigation, reduced the number of piers to be sunk in the riverbed, and gave the crossing a profile of considerable grace. In replacing a drawbridge with a high-level span, the Arrigoni Bridge anticipated the major highway crossings that would follow over Connecticut’s navigable rivers.

The bridge exemplifies the long-span engineering of its era. ⁷ The demand for uninterrupted highway passage over large bodies of water called forth a generation of great cantilever trusses, suspension bridges, and steel arches, made possible by new erection methods, by structural components of unprecedented size, and by special metals. Nearly a third of the Arrigoni Bridge was built of high-strength silicon steel. The arches were erected almost entirely outward from the center pier, each half balancing the other as the steel advanced over the water. Beneath the roadway run chains of massive eyebars tying the ends of each arch together. This tied-arch technique resists the outward horizontal thrust that an arch exerts at its base, permitting piers far smaller and more economical than the structure would otherwise have required.

The Arrigoni Bridge opened to traffic on August 6, 1938, and the old drawbridge was demolished. ⁸ Its roadway measured forty-five feet across, carrying four lanes, and the structure was designed so that two more could be added without major modification. That same year, the American Institute of Steel Construction awarded it first prize as the most beautiful steel bridge in the large bridge category. ^{1 6}

The Freeway That Was Not Built

In 1963, the state added a forty-mile expressway for U.S. Route 6A to its long-range highway plans. ⁸ From Interstate 84 at Southington, the freeway was to run east along the corridor of present-day Interstate 691 and State Route 66 to Willimantic. The Arrigoni Bridge would not serve such a highway, and a new crossing would be required.

The General Assembly created the Middlesex Bridge and Port Authority in 1965 to study the feasibility of both a bridge and a port at Middletown. ⁸ The Authority worked alongside the Mid-State Regional Planning Agency, then at work on the new State Route 66. The Arrigoni Bridge was reckoned capable of carrying 30,000 vehicles a day and was at the time carrying about 20,000. Planners projected a need for 73,000 by the design year of 1995, a volume that would have overwhelmed it entirely.

Studies released in 1967 and 1968 examined two crossings in detail, both downstream of the existing bridge. ⁸ Because the river bends at Middletown, each alignment would have run roughly north-northeast rather than due east. Line A would have crossed east of Bodkin Rock, south of the point where State Route 17 departs the shared alignment in Portland. Line B would have crossed nearer both downtowns, south of the High Street intersection. Line A was preferred for its lower cost.

The crossing was to be twin arch spans, a design judged best suited to the requirements, though twin single-span suspension bridges were also considered. ⁸ Each direction would carry four lanes, of which three would open at first. The main span would have measured 1,120 feet, nearly the length of both Arrigoni arches together, and offered about 160 feet of clearance. The cost was estimated at $31 million, with completion recommended for 1975.

The highways around the new bridge were to be rebuilt as well. ⁸ State Route 9 would have been moved entirely off Acheson Drive, the substandard waterfront street in Middletown, following instead the State Route 3 corridor south from Cromwell to Butternut Hollow, where it would have merged with the new State Route 66 and bypassed downtown to the south. At Tryon Hill, State Route 9 would have continued on its existing line while State Routes 66 and 17 turned northeast toward the new bridge. In Portland, a three-way interchange would have divided them, State Route 17 running north and State Route 66 east. The Arrigoni Bridge, relieved of through traffic, would have remained open for local use.

The plans for both the bridge and the State Route 66 freeway were canceled in the late 1970s. ⁸ The Arrigoni Bridge remains the crossing at Middletown, carrying traffic its designers never anticipated.

Later Years

The bridge was rehabilitated in 1994 and completely repainted in 1997. ⁸

A proposal to illuminate the structure with necklace lighting and spotlights from below has circulated since the 1990s, at an estimated cost of $500,000. ⁸ Supporters argue that a lighted bridge would draw visitors and improve the look of the river. Opponents hold that the money would be better spent elsewhere and that the glare would further impair the night sky for local astronomers.

In late 2023, the United States Postal Service issued a set of four first-class stamps devoted to American bridges, the Arrigoni Bridge among them. ⁸ It appeared alongside the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge between Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Omaha, Nebraska; the Skydance Bridge in Oklahoma City; and the Iowa-Illinois Memorial Bridge between Bettendorf, Iowa, and Moline, Illinois.