Oct. 19, 1903: Next time you’re stuck in traffic at Fort Pitt Blvd. and Stanwix Street, take a glance at the blackened bridge pier that looms nearby in the Monongahela River. The stone pier is part of the sad and tragic history of a bridge that’s long gone. It was called the Wabash Bridge, and death and hard luck were with it from the beginning.
As the structure neared completion in autumn of 1903, a construction crane atop the bridge collapsed. “There was an awful crash over our heads,” said Earl Crider, who was on a barge below. “Looking up, I saw beams and girders in the air.” Parts of the bridge extending out over the Mon River began to fall. Crider jumped into the water to keep from being crushed.
The collapse swept iron workers off the bridge. Some tumbled more than 100 feet. “They fell through the air like flies,” said John McTighe, who watched from Water Street. “The men were shrieking and yelling as they fell. Some were clinging to pieces of iron and beams.”
Ten workers died. They landed with sickening thuds on the barges or were crushed under tons of falling steel. One of the dead had attached a small American flag to a bridge spire before the accident. The flag remained in place as iron workers throughout Pittsburgh gathered at the site to help with rescue and recovery efforts. The workers “talked about (the flag) with much sadness as they happened to glance up at it floating there,” reported the Pittsburgh Press.
(Photo credit: Unknown)
