Lawrence Avenue pony truss bridge

Jim over at Down the Road, in a very kind and gentle (and probably inadvertent) way, made me kind of get off my butt yesterday and put my bridge where my mouth is. :)

I found out about this bridge about ten years ago when someone casually mentioned it on their photoblog and posted a picture of the abutment you see below in a recent posting. I did research and found aerial photos of it, crossing the Don as part of a rather scrotum-like course that once carried Lawrence Avenue East into the Don Valley and across the East Don. It's only been in the last couple of years that I've actually come across photos of that bridge from a human perspective. I put a few things together for Jim's benefit, but it occurs to me now that, now that I have them gathered at last, I ought to do what I've been meaning to for a while and post them. Someone out there might really love to see this.

Here's what the area looked like in 1947.

For context, here are increasingly wide views of the area today... the last corresponding with the 1947 view above, more or less.

Here's a shot of the bridge, looking southward, I think, dating from probably the 1940s.

Here are a couple of shots taken by James Salmon in the 1950s. The bridge was closed at the time, apparently. I suspect this had something to do with Hurricane Hazel. I suspect the bridge was open to traffic again prior to its removal circa 1963, when the current six-lane course of Lawrence was opened about a hundred yards to the north, and the Don Valley Parkway was constructed out of the south up the road allowance of Woodbine Avenue. There never was a corner of Lawrence and Woodbine, but technically there kind of was, if you see what I mean. These views look west.