Category:Tilghman Street Viaduct

As the Tilghman Street Viaduct (commonly known as the Tilghman Street Bridge) is a a 12-span concrete open spandrel arch bridge originally constructed in 1929. It is 1,387 feet long and 53 feet wide. This section of Tilghman Street has an average daily traffic of 17,398 vehicles. The bridge was first approved in a bond issue, passed by the voters of Allentown in November 1926. It was budgeted at $3,850,000. In April 1927, the James B. Long company of Norristown, PA was asked by City Council to design the bridge. The Sees & Derham company of Philadelphia began work on the bridge on April 16, 1928. On September 14th, 1929, the bridge was officially opened to traffic.

The project also included the reconstruction of strengthening of the older Tilghman Street Bridge over the Jordan Creek, as the viaduct marked the completion of the major highway, US 22, also known as the William Penn Highway. The highway was planned in the early 1920s to connect Easton with the West Virginia Line, with the road beginning in New York City at the eastern end of the Lincoln Tunnel. With the completion of the Tilghman Street Viaduct, the road designation was assigned to Union Boulevard, east of the Lehigh River, and to Tilghman Street, west of the Lehigh. It turned south at Fifteenth Street to Hamilton Street, then west along Hamilton, and Hamilton Boulevard to Wescoesville, where it then went to Trexlertown, Kutztown, Reading then to Harrisburg. In 1931, it was designated U.S. Route 22. The route changed to U.S. 222 at Fifteenth and Hamilton and U.S. 222 into Reading.

In 1954, the first section of the Lehigh Valley Thruway opened to traffic from west of PA 100 at Schnecksville to the PA 987 interchange north of Bethlehem removing the US 22 designation from Tilghman Street and Union Boulevard. Over the decades since it opened in 1929, the bridge has had several reconstructions, the most recent in 1995. It was closed in 2018 for major reconstruction, planning to be reopened in 2020 or 2021.