London was a thriving port in the 1880s when building work started on Tower Bridge as a much-needed crossing point in the east. Designed by Horace Jones and tweaked by engineer John Wolfe Barry, the bridge was made entirely from British materials, including Glaswegian steel, Portland stone and Cornish granite. Sadly Jones never saw the bridge completed, dying in 1887, a year into its construction.
Draped with curved suspension struts, the city’s most easterly bridge was finished in 1894. On completion, its then-revolutionary steam-driven bascule mechanism could raise the bridge’s roadway in three minutes, allowing ships to pass underneath.
This post is an automated archive from a submission made on /r/ArchitecturePorn, powered by Fediverser software running on alien.top. Responses to this submission will not be seen by the original author until they claim ownership of their alien.top account. Please consider reaching out to them let them know about this post and help them migrate to Lemmy.
Lemmy users: you are still very much encouraged to participate in the discussion. There are still many other subscribers on ! that can benefit from your contribution and join in the conversation.
Reddit users: you can also join the fediverse right away by getting by visiting https://portal.alien.top. If you are looking for a Reddit alternative made for and by an independent community, check out Fediverser.