World’s longest held erection

Every day, I’m supposed to take a little blue pill. It’s actually for my heart and is a low dose Aspirin. I hear however that other gentlemen sometimes make use of another little blue pill by Pfizer. This pill is intended to help them become more upstanding citizens than they might otherwise be able to be. One potential side-effect that is reported is that the upstandingness can last rather longer than required. Or is comfortable. Imagine then holding this stance for a full fifteen years!

As the city of Chicago recovered from its great fire and grew from strength to strength, the river traffic up the north arm of the Chicago river was finding it harder and harder to negotiate the swing bridges then in use. The following potted history of the Kinzie St railway bridge can be read in more detail at Wikipedia.

By 1907 construction started on a new bascule bridge that would allow more space for larger boats to pass on the river. Designed to carry two rail tracks, the foundations of the pivot were required to sit on the bedrock, a full 29m below the river bed.  By the time the bridge opened on September 19, 1908 an alternative scheme was already under way that led to the closure of Wells Street Station and its replacement with a new terminal on the west bank of the river. When the Ogilvie Transportation Center opened in 1911, Kinzie Street railroad bridge was left to handle only freight traffic.

During the second half of the 20th century the number of companies using the railroad for shipping on Chicago’s near north side declined severely. The construction of the Columbus Drive Bridge in 1982 wiped out part of the right of way and the spur to Navy Pier was abandoned. Service to the Tribune Tower also ended in the 1980s, and by the 1990s traffic along the remaining section of the spur served only one customer, the Chicago Sun-Times, with only one train per day. The newspaper moved their printing plant out of downtown Chicago in early 2001 and now shares the Herald Tribune printing plant, leaving no traffic across the bridge and it has since been permanently raised in the open position.

Kinzie St. Bridge, Chicago

Kinzie St. Railroad Bridge

Printing Plant