Madison Street Bridge

The Madison Street Bridge, or Madison Bridge, refers to two different bridges that spanned the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, from 1891 to 1900 and from 1900 to 1909. The bridges connected Madison Street, on the river's west bank, and Hawthorne Avenue, on the east bank, on approximately the same alignment as the existing Hawthorne Bridge. The original and later bridges are sometimes referred to as Madison Street Bridge No. 1 and Madison Street Bridge No. 2, respectively. The second bridge, built in 1900, has alternatively been referred to as the "rebuilt" Madison Street Bridge , rather than as a new bridge, because it was rebuilt on the same piers. Both were swing bridges, whereas their successor, the Hawthorne Bridge, is a vertical-lift-type.

Construction of the first bridge, a wooden swing-span bridge, began in February 1890. It was built by the Pacific Bridge Company and owned by the Madison Street Bridge Company. It opened as a toll bridge on January 11, 1891. At that time, the bridge's east end was in the city of East Portland, Oregon. Subsequently, in July of the same year, East Portland merged with its larger neighbor, becoming part of the city of Portland. Later in 1891, the Oregon state legislature organized eight Portland residents into a committee that purchased the bridge on November 18, 1891, for $145,000 and eliminated the tolls. The following year, the committee won approval from the United States Secretary of War for a contract to build the Burnside Bridge nearby.

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