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Bromfield’s Bridges

Interlaken Road Bridge, built in 1941

June Road Bridge, built in 1935

Wildwood Road Bridge Parapet Wildwood Road Bridge, built in 1933

Cedar Heights Road Bridge, built in 1933

Cold Spring Road Bridge, built in 1935

Riverbank Road Bridge, built in 1940

ou may be familiar with the rustic Cold Spring Road and June Road Bridges, but up Long Ridge Road is another of Stamford’s historic treasures: the Wildwood Road Bridge. All you can see from the road is the rusticated stone parapet wall of the bridge, which straddles private property. But underneath the parapet is a Twentieth Century stone bridge worthy of a Bing-Crosby-in-Connecticut movie. Only it’s not simply a stone bridge. None of them are. They are all a combination of modern technology–concrete reinforced with steel–combined with stone masonry. Calling it solid stone masonry though is a misnomer. The original approach walls , or wingwalls, of the June and Cold Spring Road bridges, for instance, appear to have been constructed of stone that was laid in sand beds and then pointed with mortar. On the other hand, the parapet walls of the Cold Spring Road Bridge are likely solid masonry. The reinforced concrete elements on the Cold Spring Road Bridge are the abutment and pier bridge seats, the bridge deck and steel beam encase-

ments and the spandrel walls, which do contain veneered stone. On the June Road Bridge, the structural arch and bridge railing are reinforced concrete construction. These three and two other bridg-es–Cedar Heights Road and Interlak-en Road (over the North Stamford Reservoir outlet)–were designed by Llewellyn Bromfield Jr., who served as Stamford’s Town Engineer from 1932 to 1938 and also built bridges for Stamford as principal of his own firm (a predecessor of Redniss and Mead), which he headed from 1915 to 1962. He designed Boyle Stadium at Stamford High School as well. In the first 2o years of the Twentieth Century, modern bridge building was experimental, but by

193o, the durability, minimal maintenance, speed of construction and ability of reinforced concrete to be styled as various bridge types made it the technology of choice for many bridges. In 1926, Bromfield was appointed to a town planning commission that addressed road improvement issues. Between 1926 and 1941, Stamford built a total of 19 bridges, about half of which originally combined some form of reinforced concrete construction with stone-faced elevations or actual stone parapets and other naturalistic features. Most of Stamford’s bridges are anonymous, but according to preservation consultant Michael Raber, “the town retained

Bromfield for most or all of the Depression-Era bridges,” so Bromfield may have designed or influenced more than these five. One of these possible Bromfield bridges–Riverbank Road–is easy to miss. It is a reinforced concrete slab bridge about a quarter mile West of Long Ridge Road on Riverbank Road. From the road you will see only two stone parapets, which, like Cold Spring Road parapets, are all stone,, a decorative element made possible on this short-span

bridge by the structural concrete in the bridge deck under the road.. If you walk down the bank on the south side of the road you will also find a long all-stone retaining, or channel wall extending down the river 3o feet or more. The effect is quite picturesque. Bromfield was known to have taken inspiration from bridges in Acadia National Park on Mt. Desert Island in Maine, built by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., as well as bridges on the Bronx River Parkway. Since the youngest of Bromfield’s stone-faced bridges is

now 75 years old, they are all in need of repair. The City of Stamford has already sensitively rehabilitated the Cold Spring Road and June Road bridges, retaining much original material, and city engineers now have Cedar Heights Road and Riverbank Road bridges in their sights. So HNP and HPAC are providing technical and historical input to encourage the best outcomes on the rest.

by Judy Norinsky