New Zealand's Bridges: Carlton Bridge across the Avon River in Christchurch

March 2011(-43.521 Degrees, 172.265 Degrees) Carlton Bridge

Continuing east along the Avon River, I photographed the Fendalton Bridge and what I called the Little Hagley Footbridge, but these one span bridges are beginning to look the same. I think New Zealand's South Island and Christchurch are too far from expressways and innovative bridge design. Of course, two of the great innovators on concrete design were Park and Pauley at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, but these bridges were build before their careers had started.

The Avon River makes a very tight backward 'S' curve which forms the north and east boundaries of Hagley Golf Course and the western boundary of Christchurch's CBD. The Carlton Bridge crosses over the Avon River at the northeast corner of Hagley Park and is one of the main entrances into the CBD. It's a single span reinforced concrete deck arch bridge with diaphragm abutments and concrete 'arch-shaped' T girders (or are they haunched girders?).

A placard on the exterior girder says that the bridge was erected by the Christchurch City Council in 1929. I noticed there is a 20 page report about the bridge written by Walter Gordon Morrison, but there is a $30 fee to read it (from the ICE library). There's also some photos from the 1930s on the Internet showing the bridge looking very much as it does today.

New Zealand's Bridges: Carlton Bridge across the Avon River in Christchurch by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.