(click on images for larger view)
Bridge Street Bridge,
Bridge No. 1852
• Bridge Street over Willimantic River
• Windham
• Stone arch
• Length: 80'
• Built in 1868
• Lyman Jordan, builder
The 80' span of this impressive stone arch is the third longest in Connecticut, exceeded only by
Hartford's Main Street and Bulkeley bridges. Its finely cut ring stones, large keystone, and
parapet coping are grey granite of a type quarried locally, and the rubble spandrels appear to be
made of stone cut from the ledge along the river banks. The builder, Willimantic stonemason Lyman
Jordan, inserted a large tablet bearing his name and the date of the bridge (now worn and hard to
read) in the east parapet.
The bridge formerly stood in the midst of a large mill complex owned by the Windham Cotton
Manufacturing Company, of which only a few remnants survive. Just west of the bridge was a dam
that provided the waterpower for the mill. The wisdom of using stone arches for crossings located
downstream from mill dams was shown just one year after the Bridge Street Bridge was completed. In
October 1869, heavy rains caused flooding throughout eastern Connecticut, destroyed dozens of dams
and bridges, and turned the countryside into what one observer called a "vast lake." Both this
bridge and Willimantic's other stone arch (about a mile downstream at the former American Thread
mills) survived intact.
