Hoan Bridge

The Hoan Bridge

The Daniel Hoan Memorial Bridge is a tied arch bridge that connects Interstate 794 in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin to the Lake Freeway across the Milwaukee River inlet. It is named after Daniel Hoan, a former mayor of Milwaukee.

It was designed by the firm Howard, Needles, Tammen & Bergendoff and in 1975 won the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) Long Span Bridge Award.

Although construction on the bridge lasted briefly from 1970 until 1972, it did not open to traffic until 1977 due to public backlash against the planned Milwaukee County freeway system. This halted completion of the connecting roadways and led to the Hoan Bridge being known as "The Bridge to Nowhere." Its unfinished state was used as the site of the car chase scene in the movie The Blues Brothers. Eventually, the bridge would connect to somewhere by 1997, when the Lake Parkway (Wisconsin Highway 794) opened between the bridge's southernmost exit, connecting the bridge between the Bay View neighborhood and the northeast part of Mitchell Field.

The Hoan Bridge was temporarily closed on December 13, 2000 after two of three support beams failed, causing the north-bound lanes to buckle and sag by several feet, leaving the span in a near collapsed state. Incredibly, no motorists were injured when the bridge failed. On December 28, 2000 engineers used explosives to remove the damaged section. After reconstruction of the failed span (and extensive rehabilitation and retrofitting of the remainder of the bridge), the Hoan Bridge fully reopened in November 2001. A total of $19 million was spent to demolish and replace the damaged section and retrofit the remainder of the bridge.

Experts believe that improperly designed transverse beams (which tie the three support beams together) along with a period of extreme cold and snow led to the partial collapse of the Hoan Bridge.

External links

• Wisconsin Highways
• Milwaukee Harbor Bridge at Structurae
• Failure Analysis
• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper archive of Hoan bridge failure event
• Milwaukee Harbor Bridge at Structurae