I kept looking past the wreckage to the little house across the river.

Collapsed Wall Street Bridge with broken decking in the foreground, the far span still upright, and a small house across the river on the left.
“Wall St. Bridge.” In the digital collection Ann Arbor Postcards. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed October 03, 2026.View full size

Across the river

The Bentley’s online postcard collection has a photograph of the Wall Street Bridge in Ann Arbor after its collapse. The broken deck fills the foreground, with pieces of the bridge lying at the waterline.

Across the river there’s a small house on the left and trees on the right.

At the bottom

The lettering at the bottom names the bridge and gives the collapse date: August 6, 1909. There’s a small “Benham, Photo” credit at the right.

The part still standing

Beyond the broken stretch, the uprights still frame the roadway. At postcard size, the far end almost looks usable.

I’ve gone back to the image several times now. Each time, I follow the road before I notice where it stops.

The following spring

In March 1910, the council proceedings record a contract for a reinforced-concrete bridge at Wall Street. It was to be ready for the city to gravel or pave by August 1. That’s the deadline in the contract; I still need to find out when it opened.

Next I’m looking for a view of the replacement from roughly the same position. I want to see what happened to the approaches, and whether I can still find the little house.

What I read