Franklin Avenue Bridge

This article is about the bridge in Minneapolis. For the bridge that carries Franklin Avenue in Los Angeles, see Shakespeare Bridge.

Franklin Avenue Bridge
Franklin Avenue Bridge spanning the Mississippi River
Coordinates
Carries	CSAH 5 (Franklin Avenue)
Crosses	Mississippi River
Locale	Minneapolis, Minnesota
Official name	F.W. Cappelen Memorial Bridge
ID number	2441
Characteristics
Design	Concrete Arch
Total length	1054.7 feet
Longest span	400 feet
Bridges over the Mississippi in Minneapolis–St. Paul. Franklin Ave. is near the bottom of the image between I-94 and Short Line bridge.

The Franklin Avenue Bridge, officially the F.W. Cappelen Memorial Bridge, carries Franklin Avenue over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was designed by Frederick William Cappelen, assisted by Kristoffer Olsen Oustad, both of whom were among four important Norwegian-American engineers working in the region at the time. The reinforced-concrete open-spandrel arched structure was completed in 1923. The bridge's overall length is 1054.7 feet (321.47 m), with a central span of 400 feet (122 m). It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 along with several other area bridges as part of a multiple-property submission. At the time of its completion, the bridge's central span was the longest concrete arch in the world.

The bridge originally carried streetcars, which were removed in the 1940s. A major renovation in the early 1970s changed many of the ornamental details and widened a completely replaced deck. A bike lane was added in 2005. The bridge will be extensively rehabilitated from 2015-2016, including restoring some of the details lost in the 1970s reconstruction

External links

• Media related to at Wikimedia Commons
• Cappelen Memorial Bridge at Structurae