Gladesville Bridge is a heritage-listed concrete arch road bridge that carries Victoria Road over the Parramatta River, linking the Sydney suburbs of Drummoyne and Huntleys Point, in the local government areas of Canada Bay and Hunter's Hill respectively, in New South Wales, Australia. Despite its name, the bridge is not in Gladesville. The Gladesville Bridge is a few kilometres upstream of the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge. When it was completed in 1964, Gladesville Bridge was the longest single span concrete arch ever constructed. Gladesville Bridge is the largest of a complex of three bridges, including Fig Tree Bridge and Tarban Creek Bridge, designed to carry traffic as part of the North Western Expressway. The bridge was the first phase of this freeway project that was to connect traffic from the Newcastle via Wahroonga/Lane Cove, then through Glebe/Annandale to connect into the city. Due to community action the freeway project was abandoned by the Wran Government in 1977, leaving the Gladesville Bridge connecting the existing arterial roads. The Gladesville Bridge was designed by Anthony Gee, G. Maunsell & Partners and Eugène Freyssinet and built from 1959 to 1964 by Reed & Mallik (Engineers, England) and Stuart Bros (Builders, Sydney). The property is owned by Transport for NSW. The bridge was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 1 October 2014.
History Europeans first settled in the Gladesville/Drummoyne area of Sydney soon after landfall at Sydney Cove. In the 1790s, Crown grants of 12-hectare (30-acre) lots were made available in the vicinity of Gladesville to encourage agricultural pursuits in the area. The future suburb of Gladesville remained isolated and rural until the 1850s when the earlier land grants were subdivided into large urban building blocks for the development of 'gentlemen's residences' for the wealthier colonists of NSW.
1881 bridge
To provide better access to Sydney, a wharf was soon erected on the Parramatta River at Gladesville and a two-lane steel lattice truss girder bridge with swing span was built across the river between Drummoyne and Huntleys Point. Remnants of the sandstone abutments of the original bridge still exist on the river banks to the south-west of the present bridge. This bridge carried a tramline and road traffic but did not accommodate pedestrians. This bridge, called the Gladesville Bridge, and also known as the Parramatta River Bridge, was opened on 1 February 1881. The old Gladesville Bridge was constructed as part of a series of bridges built during the 1880s, which also saw the construction of the Fig Tree Bridge and the Iron Cove Bridge. It was the only crossing of the Parramatta River east of Parramatta at the time of construction, with punts and ferries (steamers) providing the main methods of crossing the river. The closest crossing to the bridge was the Bedlam Punt, which operated from 1829 through to 1881 between Punt Road in the present-day Gladesville and the Great North Road in present-day Abbotsford. This bridge was also constructed per agitation by the community on providing a tram service from Ryde to the city. The 1881 Gladesville Bridge was about 300 metres (984 ft) to the west of the modern bridge. This original bridge only carried one lane of traffic in each direction as well as a tramway. It featured a swing span on the southern end of the bridge that could be opened to permit sailing ships and steamers with high funnels to pass. 'Sixty miler' colliers from Newcastle would require the bridge to be opened to gain access to the Australian Gas Light Company (AGL) gasworks site at Mortlake, (now redeveloped as Breakfast Point). The bridge stood on iron cylinders with a sandstone pier at each end of the bridge. The sandstone piers are all that remain today of the original bridge, with the northern pier adjacent to the Huntleys Point ferry wharf, and the southern in Howley Park in Drummoyne.
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