My previous column detailed where the Bridge Street Bridge and Jersey Street were 100 years ago, in 1909.
After more years of angst, the rickety, half iron – half wooden covered Bridge Street Bridge was replaced in 1917.
The new Bridge Street Bridge was similar to the Derby-Shelton Bridge and Derby’s Main Street (Route 34) at the time, built of concrete to absorb vibrations from passing trolleys.
Combined with the Maple Street Bridge , built in the 1890s, Ansonia could proudly boast of two decent downtown bridges by the end of 1917.
Jersey Street , along the west bank between the two bridges, changed its name to Broad Street around World War I. It remained a crowded place, however, thanks to the addition of more tenement buildings, many of which were wood “three-deckers”, some of which were built right over the riverbank.
Ironically, for all the trouble it had caused in years past, the Bridge Street Bridge was the only Naugatuck River bridge left standing after the August 19, 1955 flood. The Broad Street area was devastated also, with some buildings being outright destroyed and many others condemned.
The Army Corps of Engineers threw a Bailey bridge across the river to relieve the strain on the Bridge Street Bridge, only to have the temporary bridge wash away in the October 15, 1955 flood.
Large sections of Ansonia , particularly the Broad Street area and south Main Street, were devastated. But the October flood was the last of the big floods to strike the area.
A second Bailey bridge replaced the first, and the Division and Maple Street bridges were replaced with the current spans in 1957 and 1958.
Finally, starting in July 1959, the concrete Bridge Street Bridge, whose construction caused so much controversy and was the sole link between west and east Ansonia after the flood, was demolished to make way for a new one.
The new approaches to the Maple and Bridge Street Bridges, and even the temporary Bailey bridge, required demolishing existing buildings along Broad Street. For five years after the flood, the vacant lots created by this and the buildings destroyed by the 1955 floods in the once teeming neighborhood created a discomforting reminder of the natural disaster that ravaged Ansonia and the Valley.
Something needed to be done with Broad Street.
TO BE CONCLUDED.
This story, and many others, can be followed on a day-by-day basis on the Derby Historical Society’s This Week in History page.
