In search of America's old covered bridges

America's first documented wooden covered bridge was erected at Philadelphia,Pennsylvania in 1805.Hundreds were constructed within two decades and at least 10,000 by the later 1800s.As settlers moved West,broad rivers were crossed with inventive structures incorporating timber trusses ingeniously developed by carpenters.Called covered bridges because of the roof and siding needed to protect the timber trusses,they became ubiquitous features on the American landscape.Over the past two centuries,most covered bridges were lost to flood,ice,arson,lightening,decay,as well as"progress,"replaced by"modern"iron,concrete,and steel spans.Of some 700 covered bridges remaining,many are mere replicas of their original forms no longer supported by timber trusses.Genuine historic bridges remain largely from the last half of the 1800s while civic boosterism has led to claims of earlier dates with often questionable authenticity.This essay presents three wooden covered bridges constructed in the 1820s along a 10-mile stretch of the Wallkill River in New Paltz,New York.Of the three,only Perrine's Bridge,constructed first in 1821 and covered in 1822,is still standing with intact Burr timber trusses.Perrine's is an iconic structure with exceptional heritage value because of authentic re-building and restoration in 1834,1846,1917,and 1968.Using documentary records,this essay establishes an accurate intertwined chronology for the three bridges,detailing nineteenth century building practices and contentious mid-twentieth century struggles pitting preservationists wanting authentic restoration against those wanting removal.

Trade Bridge Covered with Chinese Tea

China National Native Produce & Animal By-products Guangxi Tea Imp. & Exp. Co. is a subsidiary company of China National Native Produce & Animal By-products Import & Export Corporation. The company has a history of more than 40 years in doing foreign trade business and has established stable and favorable relationship with about 100 companies from more than 30 countries and regions. The main business scope of the company includes: all kinds of tea, native produce products, forest chemical products, esse...

China’s corridor bridges:heritage buildings over water

Essentially unknown in the rest of the world and only recently appreciated in China,the globally significant 3000+‘corridor bridges’(langqiao)in China far outnumber the better-known‘covered bridges’found in North America and Europe.Rivaling or exceeding those in the West in number,age,complexity,and architectural ambition,some of China’s outstanding timber langqiao in the mountains of Fujian and Zhejiang provinces are on the cusp of being inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage cultural sites.Throughout south and central China today there is moreover a resurgence of new timber langqiao being erected using traditional carpentry alongside the unprecedented construction of modern marvels of steel and concrete.Archaeological evidence in 2001 uncovered China’s earliest‘corridor bridge’—thus the oldest known covered bridge in the world—with a length of 42m dating to the Han dynasty 2000 years ago.The Rulong Bridge,which dates to 1625 and is documented as the oldest standing woven arch-beam langqiao,can be visited today in Qingyuan county,southern Zhejiang.Even older langqiao with parallel log beams as the substructure have come to light in neighboring Fujian province,most notably the Zhiqing Bridge in a rural area of Jian’ou city that dates to 1490.China’s bridges,whether with a corridor atop or without,have traditionally not been included under the umbrella of‘vernacular architecture’even as they usually were created by local craftspeople employing the same approaches and practices for dwellings and temples.Just as with these better researched structures,langqiao must be studied not only from the perspective of architecture,but also anthropology,geography,history,and sociology,among other disciplines.Rather than being abandoned as artifacts from the past,China’s langqiao today represent a living tradition that continues serving rural communities as places of passage,spaces for leisure and marketing,sites for worship,and increasingly destinations for tourists in search of nostalgic connections with China’s past.The research presented in this article draws heavily from the authors’China’s Covered Bridges:Architecture over Water,a comprehensive book published in late 2019 in Shanghai and London by Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press that will be distributed in 2020 by the University of Hawai’i Press.Despite the scope of this book,the complexity of China’s langqiao remains understudied.