Know Your Neighborhood: The Ben Franklin Bridge (part 3): 
The Delaware River Bridge  

As buildings were torn down in Old City, work was going on in the Delaware River. (1st - 5th photo) At the peak of construction, 1,300 people worked on the bridge, and 15 died during its construction.

Soon after construction started a dispute arose between New Jersey and Philadelphia. New Jersey wanted toll booths on the bridge while Pennsylvania wanted the bridge to be free, using tax money to pay for the construction. Work on the bridge even halted for some time until eventually Pennsylvania agreed to construct toll booths.

Construction on the bridge lasted until 1926, opening just three days before the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In those four years, 70,000 tons of steel, 1.5 million rivets, and 250,000 miles of steel wire went into the making of the bridge. The cables that support the roadway were made up of almost 20,000 individual wires that were spun in place as the bridge was being built. When compacted, their final diameter was 30 inches. The supports are anchored in concrete, which is buried about 80 feet below ground in Philadelphia and Camden. (6th photo)

This bridge was an early example of multimodalism; it was designed to carry pedestrians (walkways), automobiles (roadway), trains (PATCO line) and trolleys. However, during the four years in the early 1920s that the bridge was under construction, the bus industry put the trolley industry out of business and consequently, the infrastructure built for the trolley system (stairs, elevators, platform concourse and tiled waiting areas (7th photo)) was never used.

When it opened, on July 1, 1926, it was the the longest suspension bridge in the world (7,456-foot-long with a main span of 1750 ft ), losing that title in 1929 to the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit. It had cost $37,103,765.42 (28% over initial estimates).

An estimated 100,000 people crossed the span on opening day (8th & 9th photos), taking the opportunity to travel between Philadelphia and Camden without water transportation. On July 5, 1926, President Calvin Coolidge attended a dedication ceremony on the bridge during festivities in Philadelphia marking the sesquicentennial of the U.S.

Initial tolls for the bridge: Horse-drawn wagons paid 30 or 40 cents, depending on the number of horses. Motorists paid 25 cents. (10th photo) Pedestrians were (and still are) free.

In 1956 it was renamed The Benjamin Franklin Bridge, to differentiate it from a second suspension bridge over the Delaware, the Walt Whitman Bridge.

Bridge under construction with El underneath