Bridges presentation
Because the
material could be moulded into elaborate shapes, extravagantly decorative iron arches were used for
pedestrian bridges on the grounds of estates and imperial palaces, such as Catherine the Great's
Tsarskoye Selo in St Petersburg (Russia), or urban pleasure grounds, such as Central Park in New
York City (USA). Both places have remarkable collections of cast-iron arch bridges.
Figure 8 Royal Albert Bridge, Saltash, Cornwall (UK),
was the last great enterprise of Isambard Kingdom
Brunel, England's foremost Victorian engineer. This
photograph served as the frontispiece to William
Humber's A Complete Treatise on Cast and Wrought
Iron Bridge Construction, published in 1864, and
shows one of the great lenticular spans being jacked
into place. It was 445ft (135m) long, consisting of a
single wrought-iron elliptical tube upper chord and a
curved bottom chord of linked eyebar chains connected
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