Wernwag, Palmer and the Earliest Pennsylvania Covered Bridges
The Permanent Bridge
The first covered bridge in America crossed the Schuylkill at High Street, now Market Street -- a familiar enough spot to generations of Drexel and Penn students and faculty! It replaced a pontoon bridge, and for that reason it was called The Permanent Bridge. It was not originally planned as a wooden or covered bridge, but rather as a stone bridge. The abutments and piers had been begun in 1800 and were complete in 1804, when the decision was made to complete the Permanent Bridge as a wooden bridge. For this purpose, Thomas Palmer, a bridge architect, was brought from New England. Palmer's bridge was braced with three arches and multiple kingposts. The suggestion that it be covered came from Judge Richard Peters, president of the Permanent Bridge Company. Palmer supported it, expecting the bridge to last thirty, and perhaps even forty years, if covered. Owen Biddle, a Philadelphia architect and builder, did the woodwork and ornamentation that were to make the bridge a memorable Philadelphia landmark.
Wernwag's Bridge at Upper Ferry
By 1810 there was a demand for another Schuylkill bridge, to be built at Upper Ferry. The design of this bridge was undertaken by Lewis Wernwag, an immigrant from Württemburg, Germany. The image above of the Upper Ferry bridge is from a German print, and the lettering on the print is approximated with a computer font, as it was not scanned successfully.
Wernwag was an engineer and inventor who had already built bridges over Neshaminy Creek and Frankford Creek. The Frankford Creek "Economy" bridge was a drawbridge, on the following plan:
Wernwag's Swing-Bridge Plan
The Upper Ferry site probably was not too far from the modern Spring Garden Bridge, connecting the area then known as Fairmount with the western bank. As shown in the figure "Wernwag's Bridge at Upper Ferry," above, Wernwag's new bridge was a single arched span of 340 feet 3 3/4 inches. This made it the second-longest single-span bridge in the world, according to some authorities. Here is Wernwag's plan for the bridge:
Wernwag's plan for the Schuylkill Bridge
The Upper Ferry bridge was built in 1812, to be destroyed by fire in 1838. It was a considerable sensation, considered a new "wonder of the world," and came to be known as "The Colossus at Philadelphia" or "The Colossus at Fairmount." Because of the interest in it, a number of images of it come down to us in old prints from the time. Here is a curious one:
The Water Works
With the Wernwag Bridge in the Background
The subject matter of this print is the Water Works, not really the bridge, but no matter -- Wernwag had designed the Water Works, which were built in the early 1820's. The great bridge is visible in the background. Let's take a closer look at it:
A Closer Look
It's clearly the Colossus, but not quite right. The Colossus did not have that peak at the top. Why do you suppose the artist (Bartlett) portrayed it in that way? Well, perhaps he had been to Venice.
The Rialto Bridge
The image above is the Rialto Bridge over the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy, in October, 1995. The Rialto Bridge is a stone bridge and not covered, but like so many old world bridges it has covered market stalls on either side -- thus the appearance of being covered. Why did Bartlett make the Colossus appear more like the Rialto Bridge? Was it puffery? Nostalgia? We know that this print was one of a series Bartlett did on commission, on two trips to North America. Only sketches were done on the first trip, in 1836. Bartlett returned in 1838 to complete the set. The Colossus burned in 1838. Can it be that by Bartlett's return, the Colossus was no longer there to draw from life, so that he had to rely on memories -- memories that were mixed with memories of Venice?
Here is another view of the bridge seen through yet a different set of eyes and expectations:
Fairmount Gardens and the Colossus
But it hardly looks like a colossus here! Instead, we see echoes of the little stone bridges in early Victorian gardens, very much in the Romantic mode. Let the pictures speak for themselves: they speak of the importance that bridge had in the popular image of Philadelphia between 1812 and 1838.
Another of the great early covered bridge builders was Theodore Burr, for whom the Pennsylvania covered bridge society is named. One of Burr's most famous works was the Camelback bridge at Harrisburg:
Burr's Camelback Bridge at Harrisburg
Wernwag, like Burr and others, went on to build many more covered bridges and other engineering works. One important one in our area was at New Hope. Here is Wernwag's plan for the New Hope bridge:
Wernwag's Plan for the Great Bridge at New Hope
The plan is for one span of a large, multiple span bridge over what is, at New Hope, one of America's most powerful rivers. Sometime before 1912, it looked like this:
The New Hope Bridge Seen From Lambertville
These plans of Wernwag's bridges have been taken from Wernwag's advertising flyer. The scanned original is a 43K grayscale gif, a bit too large to show on most computer screens. If you would like to take a look at it on the original scale, click on the half-size version. 
Wernwag's Flyer
Covered bridges were to become part of the rural American landscape from Maine to Oregon and in between, but, like so many other distinctively American scenes, they were seen first in Philadelphia, and we remain in the debt of the men like Palmer and Burr and Owen Biddle and Lewis Wernwag, who built a country from the materials at hand.
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