The Arrawanna Bridge in Middletown, Connecticut

Middletown, Connecticut

Middletown is a city located in Middlesex County, Connecticut, along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, 16 miles south of Hartford. In 1650, it was incorporated as a town under its original Indian name, Mattabeseck. It received its present name in 1653. In 1784, the central...

, USA, was built in 1918. It brought Berlin Street across the Coginchaug River

Coginchaug River

The Coginchaug River in Connecticut, with a watershed of including forests, pastures, farmland, industrial, and commercial areas, is the predominant tributary of the Mattabesset River...

. The bridge was designed by the Connecticut Highway Department as Bridge No. 4536 and is an open-spandrel

Spandrel

A spandrel, less often spandril or splaundrel, is the space between two arches or between an arch and a rectangular enclosure....

 concrete arch bridge. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

 in 2004. The bridge is one of the oldest surviving structures of Connecticut's state highway department, and is the only barrel-arch design of the state's six open-spandrel bridges. "Even as a near ruin, it adds to our appreciation of the high level of technical expertise shown by the state's first bridge engineers, and it recalls the very first years of state-highway bridge construction in Connecticut."

At the time it was built, reinforced concrete was a relatively new material for bridge construction. The bridge was featured in the 1918 annual report of the Connecticut Highway Department. The bridge is owned by the city of Middletown.

By 2003, the bridge had been closed for use and was deteriorating in place, with shrubs growing in the roadway.