Do photographs lie? Theodore Burr is credited with erecting the first timber bridge spanning the Hudson River in 1804. After the crossing dropped into the river after a fire in 1909 — more than a century later — the timber superstructure was exposed and then photographed. The oft-repeated commentary since has been that the structure was what Burr originally erected in 1804.
‘Tis a mystery, a fallacy, in many ways that can be refuted.
There are no known drawings or other images of what Burr constructed in 1804, thus currently impossible to make direct comparisons. Further, Burr’s patent is from 1817, more than a decade after Burr erected the Hudson River bridge.
While it is not uncommon for bridges to be erected before a design was patented, this was not the case. When the 1817 patent drawing is viewed alongside the above photograph of the denuded bridge in 1909 —arches sandwich between slanted braces, the drawing with a single X-brace and the actual exposed structure with adjacent X-braces, one might assume that the two are related.
However, even without direct evidence, there is substantial circumstantial evidence that this was not the case since Burr at that early date was still pursuing experimental designs. Refer to both the Canajoharie and Schenectady bridges in this series for comparisons.
Burr’s 1804 crossing connected Lansingburgh in Renssalaer County on the east side to Waterford in Saratoga County on the west bank of the Hudson River. Now relatively forgotten compared to their status in the early nineteenth century, Waterford was then a prosperous village and Lansingburgh was vying with Troy to be the county seat. Troy eventually won out. In addition, both settlements plus Albany were competing for the first bridge to be built over the Hudson.
Considering that Albany and Troy are both modern cities today, Albany being New York’s capital, it might seem odd that Lansingburgh, now absorbed by Troy, along with Waterford, won out as the site for this important crossing. The reasons made sense at the time.
Lansingburgh was at the complicated confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers. Heading west, the ever-lengthening Mohawk Turnpike followed the Mohawk River on the north side while the Great Western Turnpike was on the south side.
Lansingburgh needed to be connected to the Mohawk Turnpike and that turnpike, running east–west, could only be connected across the Mohawk River at Cohoes, which had been bridged with a imposing structure with stone pillars and timber beams in 1795.
Leading citizens in Waterford, but also in Lansingburgh, began discussions about the need for a bridge across the Hudson at the end of the eighteenth century. The State Legislature authorized the Union Bridge Company on February 22, 1803 to raise money by selling shares that cost $50 with a maximum of 1000 shares that could be transferred or sold.
While Theodore Burr received the bridge-building contract, the actual document has yet to be found, thus mysteries remain about the structure supporting his bridge. The legislative act provided some clues:
“said bridge will be built at least twenty-feet wide, and be well covered with plank, not less than three inches thick, the sides of the said bridge to be secured with good substantial railings, and shall be constructed that at least one opening under the same, of not less than one hundred feet between the piers, shall be left for the passage of rafts and boats.”
Independent arches either above or beneath the deck were likely to have been the structure supporting the bridge between the piers.
There is no mention of a roof or siding. Thus, it is clear that the bridge was not initially expected to be a covered bridge, which, as the text below shows, was only accomplished in 1814–1815. If the Union Bridge had been covered in 1804, it would have been the “first documented covered bridge” in the United States.
Instead, that privilege went to Timothy Palmer’s “Permanent Bridge” in Philadelphia that had its trusses covered with a roof and siding in early 1805. Bridge builders were still debating in 1804, even in 1805, whether it made sense to cover a timber structure in order to preserve it.
Burr’s bridge was opened to the public on December 4, 1804 with great celebration that was announced in newspapers throughout New England and New York State. The often-reprinted news article praised Burr but was even more effusive concerning the masons:
“It is with pleasure we announce the completion of the bridge at this place; which, for architecture, strength and beauty, exceeds, perhaps, anything of the kind in the United States. Its symmetry is just in all its parts, which reflects the highest honor on the engineer, Mr. THEODORE BURR, and Mr. SAMUEL SHELLY, under whose immediate superintendence the work has progressed.
“While we are contemplating this noble structure, let us descend beneath the waters, and there fixing our minds on its rocky base, gradually emerge from the stream, behold with wonder and admiration, three stately columns, whose strength appear to battle the destruction of time. Here we behold the skill of Masonry, exemplified in Mr. James M’Elroy, under whose direction the pillars arose, and on whom much encomium has justly been bestowed.
“The bridge is 800 feet in length, and 30 feet in width, comprising 4 arches, which are supported by 3 pillars and the two butments. The pillars are of stone, cemented with tarris, and strongly bound with iron, being in length from 75 to 85 feet at their base, and of equal length at their surface, of 75 feet, and at their top 40 feet. Their breadth at their basis, being from 20 to 25 feet, and at their tops from 18 to 20 feet. Their height being from 23 to 33 feet, according to the depth of the water; and the greatest altitude of the arches is 18 feet.
“The bridge is divided into two separate apartments, which not only adds to its beauty, but much increases its strength; and persons crossing it being obliged to take the right hand apartment, will effectually prevent any contention which would otherwise probably result.”
In spite of this information and praise, the lack of a roof and weatherboarding proved detrimental. A public announcement dated December 15, 1812, gave advance notice that application would be made to the Legislature to alter the charter of incorporation “for the purpose of rebuilding the bridge” and that “the wood work of said bridge is so materially decayed as to require re-building for the safety and convenience of the public.” Note that the language is not to repair the bridge, but to rebuild it.
While many have assumed that the bridge was merely repaired, there is little doubt it was completely rebuilt and not by Burr but by his longtime associate, Reuben Field, a native of Vermont who was living in Waterford at the time and continued living in that area for long after.
Strange that newspapers of the time that have been located make no mention either of Reuben Field or the new bridge, likely rebuilt during 1814 to 1815. However, as Field was living Waterford, Burr was already occupied with bridges over the Susquehanna River and living in Northumberland, PA, as well as that Burr sent a letter to Field in Waterford, addressing him as “bridge-builder in February 1815.”
Much effort has been expended without success in recent years to locate what would have been a handwritten contract linking Reuben Field to the rebuilding; the search will continue.
This raises an interesting question: was the design in 1814 Burr’s or was it Field’s? Field later had to deal with a different Burr design problem — over-extended underdeck arches — used at Northumberland and Harrisburg in Pennsylvania, which were failing shortly after Burr’s death in 1822. Field’s solution was to utilize “Burr arch-trusses” above Burr’s sagging earlier lower arches. By then, of course, these had been at the heart of Burr’s 1817 patented design.
Although the timber bridge lasted more than one hundred years, its significance changed as Troy became more important, maintenance became more expensive, and the demands of heavier traffic, including trollies, made it increasingly obsolete.
The citizens continued to object to the high tolls throughout its history. Drawings as late as 1878 om a professional engineering journal showed a handsome bridge, erroneously a stating the rendering was the 1804 Burr structure rather than the rebuilt one by Field in 1814-1815.
The covered bridge met its fiery end on July 10, 1909, when three spans of the bridge caught fire and dropped into the river; the one surviving span had to be dismantled.
Only three bridges — two wooden, one dated 1804, the second 1814–1815, and another one steel — have spanned the Hudson River at this site over more than two centuries.
Standing now for more than 115 years since it was erected in 1909 — longer than the 105 years of Burr and Field’s timber bridges — today’s four-span steel truss, the Troy-Waterford Bridge, still stands on the original early nineteenth century abutments and piers.
Designed by Alfred P. Boller and Henry Hodge, this replacement bridge was designated a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2013.
Ronald G. Knapp and Terry E. Miller are the authors of Theodore Burr and the Bridging of Early America: The Man, Fellow Bridge Builders, and Their Forgotten Timber Spans (2023).
This essay is sponsored by the National Society for the Preservation of Covered Bridges. It’s part of a series of essays about covered bridges in New York State – you can read them all here.
Illustration Credits: “Tearing down the Old Covered Bridge after the fire Waterford, N.Y.” (Todd Clark Collection); a restored copy of Burr’s April 3, 1817 Patent 2769X (United States Patent Office); “Old Highway Bridge at Waterford, N.Y.,” Engineering News and American Railway Journal, June 1, 1889 (Todd Clark Collection); “McCall’s Ferry-Bridge” headline of a published letter from Theodore Burr to Reuben Field in the Philadelphia Gazette, March 10, 1815; Waterford’s Union Bridge photo found mislabeled in the National Society for the Preservation of Covered Bridges’ Harrisburg files; Waterford-Lansingburgh Bridge following its destruction by fire (Todd Clark Collection); and the approach to the current bridge, 2022 (Ronald G. Knapp photograph).
