Liberty Bridge, Andy Warhol Bridge cited as among top 19 in U.S.

All the commuters who drive across the Liberty Bridge and wait in rush hour traffic over the Monongahela River, and those traveling the Andy Warhol Bridge over the Allegheny River, can say they have been on one of the most outstanding bridges in the country.

Both Pittsburgh bridges were among the 19 bridges on the 2020 Prize Bridge Award list compiled by the American Institute of Steel Construction and the National Steel Bridge Alliance. The winners were announced Wednesday.

The Liberty Bridge was recognized with a special award for resilience. This bridge, built in 1928, demonstrated the superior resilience of structural steel with a remarkable recovery— reopening to traffic just 24 days after an accidental construction fire in September 2016 warped and buckled a main truss compression chord, the bridge alliance said.

The Liberty Bridge underwent an $82 million rehabilitation project that included about $5 million in repairs. The rehab project took about two years to complete.

The Warhol Bridge, originally the Seventh Street Bridge, won the national award for a rehabilitated bridge — same structure and same primary members.

It is one of the three “Sister Bridges” over the Allegheny River, and underwent a $25 million rehabilitation project that began in August 2016 and was completed in November 2017.

The two Pittsburgh bridges named to the list are following in the footsteps, so to speak, of city’s Sixth Street Bridge, which won the first competition in 1928. That bridge over the Allegheny River has been renamed the Roberto Clemente Bridge, as it leads right to PNC Park, where the Pittsburgh Pirates play.

Since then, more than 600 bridges of all sizes from all across the United States have received a Prize Bridge Award.

All of the 2020 Prize Bridge Award winners “have made an enormous impact on the lives of the people they serve — some in particularly dramatic ways,” the Institute of Steel Construction said in a statement.

“These projects are tributes to the creativity of the designers and the skills of the constructors who collaborated to make them reality,” said AISC President Charles J. Carter. “Steel shines and soars on their talents and we celebrate the accomplishments these projects represent.”

Judges weighed each project’s use of structural steel from both an architectural and structural engineering perspective, with an emphasis on creative solutions to the project’s program requirements, as well as the aesthetic and visual impact of the project. The awards will be presented at the Steel Bridge Alliance conference in June in Branson, Mo.

For more information about the winning projects, visit aisc.org/prizebridge.