MacArthur Bridge

The MacArthur Bridge carries a railroad deck on riveted steel trusses across the Mississippi River. Its main river crossing is a line of Pennsylvania through-truss spans, each with a polygonal upper chord that rises to a peak near midspan over a dense web of latticed, built-up members. The unpainted steel has weathered to rust brown. The trusses stand on battered piers of coursed ashlar limestone set in the river, and a long viaduct of deck spans carries the line onward on the Missouri side.

The bridge was built by the City of St. Louis to break the Terminal Railroad Association's control of the river crossings and the tolls it charged. A 1906 Congressional act authorized the city to bridge the Mississippi; bonds were issued and construction began in 1909, and after the money ran out a second bond issue in 1914 carried the work to completion. Designed by Boller & Hodge and built by the Missouri Valley Bridge & Iron Company with the American Bridge Company, it opened in 1917 as a double-deck structure — an upper roadway above a lower railroad deck — reported at the time as the largest double-deck steel bridge in the world. Automobiles crossed first; trains began using the lower deck in 1928. Known officially as the St. Louis Municipal Bridge and popularly as the Free Bridge for its lack of tolls, it was renamed in 1942 for General Douglas MacArthur. The roadway carried U.S. Route 66 from 1929 to 1955. In 1981 the deteriorated upper deck was closed to vehicles and later removed in stages. In 1989 the Terminal Railroad Association acquired the bridge from the city in exchange for the Eads Bridge; by the 2010s it was carrying roughly forty freight trains a day. A rehabilitation of the spans and deck began in 2022.