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Seventh Street Improvement Arches

Saint Paul, US

Seventh Street Improvement Arches

The Seventh Street Improvement Arches are a double-arched masonry highway bridge that formerly spanned the St. Paul and Duluth Railroad tracks in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. The Seventh Street Improvement Arches are historically significant for its rarity and the technically demanding natu

re of its skewed, helicoidal spiral, stone-arch design. The bridge is one of the few of its type in the United States, and is the only known bridge of its type in Minnesota. It was built from 1883 to 1884 by Michael O'Brien and McArthur Brothers of Chicago and was designed by William A. Truesdell. The bridge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 and on the American Society of Civil Engineers Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks in 2000. The bridge was proposed in 1883 as part of a group of improvements along Seventh Street, linking downtown St. Paul with the Dayton's Bluff neighborhood on the east. Other parts of this project included a 300-foot iron bridge crossing the Northern Pacific Railway, a long embankment, and a stone-arch sewer for the crossing of Phalen Creek. These improvements were necessary because the hill on Seventh Street needed to be rebuilt...

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