Wells Street Bridge

Wells Street Bridge, 1922

Back in 2009 I did a series of drawings of the bridge-houses in the Loop.  This was one of my favorites, so I thought I would repost. It was more an exercise in representation, so there's limited historic information.

Built: 1922
Thomas Pihlfeldt, engineer
Clarence Rowe, engineer

This is a view of the Wells Street Bridge looking northwest across the Chicago River. That round thing in the water is called a dolphin, and protects the bridge house from meandering barges. I recently spent 20 minutes in the rain waiting for this bridge to lower as various yachts motored past. In the fall people bring their sailboats in from Lake Michigan to the dry docks on the south branch. It's a good time to hang around Wacker Drive and yell abuse down at them.