Historical changes of Waibaidu Bridge
The world-famous Waibaidu Bridge is located in the lower reaches of Suzhou River and beside Huangpu River, which is one of the landmark buildings in old Shanghai. Now, how many people know its turbulent history?
Today's Waibaidu Bridge is actually the third generation.
The first generation of Waibaidu Bridge was built in 1856, named "Well Bridge", which is a wooden bridge. It was built by "Suzhou River Bridge Company" (the first bridge construction company in China's history) with the investment of 20 people (mostly auspicious bank managers or opium dealers), including Ren Wei and Homer who once worked for Jardine Matheson and Baoshun Group. The bridge is137.25m long and 7.015m wide, with a movable deck in the middle, which should be hoisted when the ship passes by.
Wells and others, who built the bridge purely for profit, once claimed that Shanghai Daotaite granted them a patent, and pedestrians had to pay a "bridge crossing tax", which only collected taxes from Chinese, and all vehicles and servants outside the bridge were exempted. Subsequently, Shanghai residents protested angrily, and Cantonese Zhan Ruoyu set up a post office at today's Shanxi intersection to pick up and drop off Chinese passing by on both sides of the strait for free to show his unyielding. Because citizens no longer pay money, it is called "white crossing". Due to public anger, the concession industrial and commercial office built a wooden pontoon bridge near Wells Bridge on 1876, and the bridge was free. Because it is adjacent to the Bund Park, the British called it "Garden Bridge" in those days, and a bronze monument was carved at the bridgehead (the bronze monument was destroyed after 1949), while the common people called it "Waidukou Bridge". . From then on, there is no charge for crossing the bridge here. Wells Bridge was demolished after it was acquired by the Ministry of Industry. This is also the origin of the second generation bridge-"Waibaidu Bridge". In the following decades, people made a slip of the tongue and pronounced it "Waibaidu Bridge", so they followed the established practice. Later, history has come to this day, and the "tolerance" is not just the name of a bridge.
During Guangxu period, after several repairs, the wooden bridge could not meet the needs of traffic development, so the Ministry of Industry decided to build another steel bridge instead. In the thirty-second year of Guangxu, the first pile was laid and completed the following year. The superstructure of the bridge is simply supported riveted steel truss, and the substructure is reinforced concrete abutment, pile foundation and concrete hollow thin slab pier. The span combination of the two holes is 52. 12m, the elevation of the beam bottom is 5.75m, and the tram track is laid on the bridge deck. This is the third generation Waibaidu Bridge.
The construction and design unit of this bridge is Howarth Erskine Co., Ltd. in Britain. The new bridge was put into use in Guangxu thirty-three years (1907), eleven years later than the Eiffel Tower in France. The bridge is 60 feet wide (including 36-foot driveway and 24-foot sidewalk) and 65,438+0,765,438+0 feet long. It was a steel structure with the latest technology at that time (the steel skeleton was made by langford Bridge Company in Britain).
With the achievements of the industrial revolution and the development of science and technology, iron bridges rose in Britain in the18th century, and steel bridges rose in the United States in the19th century. Baidu Bridge is the first all-steel bridge in China. It was built by the Ministry of Industry of Shanghai Concession at that time. All steel products are imported from Britain, and the design and structure of the whole bridge are completed by British engineers and technicians. At that time, similar steel structure bridges, besides Shanghai, also included the Wan Guo Bridge (now jiefang bridge) across the Haihe River in Tianjin, which was built at 1902, five years earlier than the Waibaidu Bridge, and was built by the Ministry of Industry of the French Concession in Tianjin, so it was also called the "French Bridge".
The name of Jinmao Building is related to the name of Jinmao Group.