Bridge No: 3020007603100

Asset ID: 807

County: Laurens

Bridge Name:

Facility Carried: US 76 Business (Main Street)

Feature Intersected: CSX Railroad

Year Built: 1937

Year Reconstructed:

Main Structure Type: T Beam

Design:

Main Material: Reinforced concrete

Railing Type: Concrete balustrades

Number of Main Spans: 3

Number of Approach Spans:

Approach Type:

Structure Length: 75 feet

Structure Width: 52.7feet

Setting: The bridge carries a 2-lane highway and sidewalks over a railroad track in downtown Laurens entirely within the Laurens HD (NR 1978, boundary expansion 1980).The historic district includes the commercial district and residential areas to its west, and is linearly oriented to Main Street roughly from the courthouse west along W. Main Street to Downs Street.According to the nomination, the properties at the bridge's quadrants are within the historic district and contributing.The ca. 1852 Methodist Church is at one quadrant.

The rail line was established in the mid-19th century by the Charleston & Western Carolina RR as a line connecting Port Royal, SC, through Augusta, GA, with branches to Anderson, Greenville, and Spartanburg.It was a minor line in the region, and a member of the Central of Georgia RR until 1894 when it was taken over by the Atlantic Coast Line (ACL) RR system, providing service to points in inland SC from the main line which ran near the coast.It was a minor branch of the ACL, later SCL and CSX rail systems.

The 3 span, 75'-long T beam bridge has standard concrete balustrades with paneled posts, haunched fascia beams to give pleasing shallow arch lines, and is supported on reinforced concrete bents.The bridge appears to be complete.

The state highway department adopted a standardized design for T beam bridges in the late 1910s and early 1920s, and they built hundreds of them in the 1920s and 1930s.This example, built in 1937 with 25' spans, is a later complete example with no individually distinctive details, but it does illustrate the approach used by the department for a standardized bridge with some minimal aesthetic treatment, such as balustrades and haunched exterior beams, that deferred to its in-town setting.Although the 1937 bridge was not yet 50 years old when the Laurens HD (NR 1978, boundary expansion 1980) was listed, it was inventoried as a contributing resource and the 1937 date noted in the nomination.The older nomination should be revisited to determine an appropriate end date for the period of significance, which appears to have been left open, but presuming it extends at least to the beginning of WWII in 1941, the contributing recommendation remains appropriate.The bridge is not individually significant, but it would be contributing.