Abstract
The Middle Road Bridge, constructed in 1909 on present-day Sherway Drive to span Etobicoke Creek between Toronto and Mississauga, was recognized as a CSCE Civil Engineering Historic Site in 2009. The official CSCE plaque for this structure will be unveiled at the 2021 Annual Conference and subsequently installed on site. The Toronto firm Barber & Young designed the bridge, the first reinforced-concrete tied-arch-truss (or “rainbow”) bridge built in North America. The paper describes some of the design and construction innovations in the structure and the professional lives of James Franklin Barber (1875–1945) and Clarence Richard Young (1869–1964), who left the partnership in 1911 to become Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Toronto and, subsequently, Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering from 1941 to 1949.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Anon (1909) New idea in bridges. The Globe, Toronto, October 28, 1909
Barber and Young (1909) Canada’s first concrete truss bridge. Canadian Cement & Concrete, pp 8, November. https://historicbridges.org/ontario/middleroadsherwaydrive/article.pdf. Accessed 22 Dec 2020
Greene BM (1921) Frank Barber. Who’s who and why 1921. International Press Limited, Toronto, p 1426. https://historicbridges.org/ontario/middleroadsherwaydrive/barber.pdf. Accessed 22 Dec 2020
Harris D (2014) Humber Bay’s Octavius Laing hicks was a master bridge builder. Etobicoke Historical Society. http://www.etobicokehistorical.com/humber-bayrsquos-octavius-laing-hicks-was-a-master-bridge-builder.html. Accessed 22 Dec 2020
Slater M, Skinner M (1998) Sparkman street bridge (Shelby Street Bridge) HAER No. TN-38. Report for the Historic American Engineering Record, p 25. http://loc.gov/pictures/item/tn0302/. Accessed 22 Dec 2020
Walton SA (1995) Canadian aesthetics of early reinforced-concrete bridges. J Soc Ind Archaeol 21(1):5–14
Acknowledgements
Financial support from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council is gratefully acknowledged. Professor Paul Gauvreau, Department of Civil & Mining Engineering, University of Toronto, graciously provided two of his photographs.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 Canadian Society for Civil Engineering
About this paper
Cite this paper
Bartlett, F.M. (2023). A Brief History of the Middle Road Bridge. In: Walbridge, S., et al. Proceedings of the Canadian Society of Civil Engineering Annual Conference 2021 . CSCE 2021. Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, vol 239. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0503-2_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0503-2_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-19-0502-5
Online ISBN: 978-981-19-0503-2
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)