4th Street Bridge (Racine, Wisconsin)

The 4th Street Bridge was a in Racine, Wisconsin that carried 4th Street over the Root River from 1878 to 1961.

Condemnation and demolition
On January 18, 1936, the bridge was closed to vehicles by order of Mayor William Swoboda. At the time, the pedestrian sidewalk was being repaired, so it was in good enough condition that it was kept open. Later that year, the city pushed for funding from the to replace the bridge with a new.

In July 1961, Mayor Jack H. Humble urged the city council to have the bridge repaired or demolished. By that time, the Racine Journal Times reported, the swing mechanism was inoperable, the frame was rusted, and the wooden floor was rotted through in some places, creating holes that were patched with old traffic signs. On September 11, 1961, while the issue was being considered, Peter F. Lee dislocated his shoulder when his foot broke through a rotten plank on the bridge, and he later sued the city for the costs of his treatment. Humble ordered the bridge closed to pedestrians on September 14, after the City Harbor Commission described it as unsafe and noted that the city was liable for injuries sustained on the bridge.

The disused bridge was ultimately demolished two years later. Luedtke Engineering Company of Frankfort, Michigan handled the demolition during late July and early August 1963. On August 5, Luedtke Engineering employee Ronald Getchell was hospitalized after he fell from a while working on demolishing the bridge. The Racine city council originally planned to replace the demolished bridge with a smaller pedestrian bridge to be built in 1964, but decided not to replace the bridge at all in an October 1963 budget meeting.

In 2012, the Racine city council approved "RootWorks: Root River Corridor Redevelopment Plan", which called for a new pedestrian bridge to be built at 4th Street, connecting Downtown to the Case New Holland campus and a new development called "River Loop North". Vandewalle & Associates unveiled plans for such a bridge in 2015.