Leet Street Bridge

The Leet Street Bridge is a demolished Pratt through truss spanning State Route 65 and active railroad tracks in Leetsdale, Pennsylvania.

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The Leet Street Bridge is a demolished Pratt through truss spanning Pennsylvania State Route 65 and active railroad tracks in Leetsdale, Pennsylvania. The structure is notable for its unusual Z-shaped sections in the hip-panel floor beam hangers and bottom chords.

The bridge was originally constructed in 1886 by the Morse Bridge Company of Youngstown, Ohio, as Bridge No. 20 for the Pittsburgh, Youngstown & Ashtabula Railroad at Lawrence Junction. In 1904, the truss was relocated to Leetsdale and widened by the Pittsburgh Steel Construction Company to carry a roadway over the Pennsylvania Railroad.

In 1946, a concrete beam girder bridge was added to the northeastern approach to accommodate the construction of the four-lane Ohio River Boulevard (State Route 65). The bridge was further modernized in 1985 with the installation of a new deck and updated railings.

By the early 1990s, concerns about the bridge’s condition led the Borough of Leetsdale to agree in 1993 to remove the Leet Street Bridge once a replacement railroad overpass was completed. ³ That overpass, located between Broad Street and Brickworks Drive, opened to traffic in 2007. ^{4 6}

In 1994, Norfolk Southern Railroad proposed transferring maintenance responsibility for the bridge to the borough, but Leetsdale declined due to the anticipated costs. ¹ Subsequent inspections by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) rated the bridge as structurally deficient. Norfolk Southern undertook limited structural repairs in late 2012. ³ In April 2013, the bridge was closed to truck traffic and reduced to a single lane for passenger vehicles. Following the discovery of a severely corroded pin nut, the bridge was closed to all vehicular traffic on October 2. ^{2 3}

Norfolk Southern later expressed interest in demolishing its portion of the truss bridge at an estimated cost of $77,000, leaving the PennDOT-owned structure over Ohio River Boulevard in place. ³ The entire bridge was ultimately removed by PennDOT in 2017, ^{5 6} with the remaining southern abutment demolished in 2024. ⁵

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Sources

1. Cherry, Bobby. “Work slated to begin on Leet Street Bridge.” TribLive, 17 Oct. 2012.
2. Dudkiewicz, Larissa. “Leet Street Bridge Closes Indefinitely.” Patch, 2 Oct. 2013.
3. Barron, Joanne. “Leetsdale span could become ‘bridge to nowhere.’” TribLive, 16 Oct. 2013.
4. Cherry, Bobby. “Leetsdale residents fear bridge closure leaves them without escape route.” TribLive, 15 Jan. 2015.
5. DiVittorio, Michael. “Leetsdale ‘hump’ along Washington Street to be removed by end of the year.” TribLive, 17 Jun. 2024.
6. Cherry, Bobby. “Preparations to begin for Leet Street Bridge removal.” TribLive, 12 May 2017.