National Register Listing

McKee Street Bridge

McKee St. and Buffalo Bayou, Houston, TX

The 1932 McKee Street Bridge in Houston, Texas was a unique and innovative design at the time of its construction. Responding to the restrictive nature of the site and the odd angle at which the street intersects Buffalo Bayou, city bridge engineer Joseph Gordon (J.G.) McKenzie developed the design to allow for the horizontal and vertical clearance required for small craft and then navigating the bayou. Although drawn from contemporary developments in bridge construction, McKenzie's design and the 120-foot main span it allowed were singular and were heralded in engineering periodicals of the day. The only one of its kind in the state, the bridge is nominated under Criterion C in the area of engineering at the state level of significance.

Early Development along Buffalo Bayou

Although the Spanish explored the Gulf of Mexico as early as 1519, mapping the Texas coastline in the process, they made little effort to move inland and colonize the Gulf Coast region. At a remote edge of Spanish territory, the area surrounding present-day Houston was left mostly to its Native-American inhabitants, primarily Karankawas, until the 19th century. The Panic of 1819 in the United States and the economic depression that followed encouraged a wave of Americans to emigrate to Spanish (and later Mexican) Texas, where they could escape their debt and acquire free land.

Most Texas immigrants settled in the eastern part of the present-day state between the Colorado and Sabine rivers, including the Gulf Coast region. From those earliest days of Anglo colonization, settlement in the area of present-day Houston has centered on Buffalo Bayou. Most east Texas rivers are slow-moving, and they tend to deposit large amounts of silt where they meet the Gulf, often creating sand bars across their mouths that render them unusable for inland transport. In contrast, Buffalo Bayou was wide and deep and therefore navigable from Galveston Bay to within 40 miles of San Felipe, the effective capital of Anglo colonies in Texas.

Recognizing the bayou's commercial possibilities, John Richardson Harris, one of Austin's original colonists, established the town of Harrisburg at what was believed to be the head of navigation for Buffalo Bayou, just southeast of present-day Houston. Harris also established a trading post at Bell's Landing on the Brazos River, the main artery of the new colony. With access to Galveston Bay via Buffalo Bayou, Harrisburg became the port for a lucrative trade between New Orleans and Texas and the principal supply center for the area's settlers.

Following the Texas Revolution in 1836, several land speculators began scrambling to establish new towns along Buffalo Bayou and Galveston Bay to replace Harrisburg, which had been burned to the ground by Mexican troops. Augustus Chapman Allen and his brother, John Kirby Allen, soon discovered that Buffalo Bayou was actually navigable even farther upstream than Harrisburg. Within four months of the Battle of San Jacinto, the Allen brothers had chosen a site on the south bank of Buffalo Bayou, purchased the land, plotted a town, and begun advertising lots for sale. They named their new city Houston after the hero of San Jacinto, General Sam Houston, and promised that it would become "the great interior commercial emporium of Texas." Although there was not yet a single house built in the town, the Allen brothers persuaded the new congress to name Houston the first capital of the Republic of Texas. Although the capital was moved to Austin in 1839, by then Houston had created a name for itself and secured its place in the industries that would define it, agriculture and commerce.

As Houston grew, others began to subdivide lands surrounding the city as well. Such was the case with the future site of the McKee Street Bridge. In 1837, members of the Frost family purchased fifteen acres from the Allen brothers on the south bank of Buffalo Bayou, just past the eastern limit of the Houston townsite, and divided it into eight blocks of twelve lots each.

Subsequently known as Frost Town (or Frostown), the small community may have been settled as early as the 1820s. Several sources have named Frost Town the first site of settlement in the area and suggested that the Allen brothers stayed there while looking for a suitable site for Houston, but some scholars have challenged these claims, insisting that there is no factual evidence to support them.

Regardless of its beginnings, Frost Town grew rapidly after its official founding in 1837. Its proximity to Houston and its location on Buffalo Bayou gave it immediate commercial significance. Houston established wharves on the bayou that became the main point of transfer from land to water-based transport for most of Texas's imports and exports. Although initially a residential district, Frost Town's location was well suited to commercial development, and the small community soon included a slaughterhouse and meat market, an armory, a brewery, a sawmill, a store, and a blacksmith shop. In 1859, the Galveston, Houston and Henderson Railroad bisected the town, further developing the area's significance as a center of transport. The railroad also built a center-span swing bridge at this site, the first over Buffalo Bayou, in 1862.

From its beginning, Houston depended on Buffalo Bayou and its link to Galveston Bay. As soon as the town was established, barges and other light draft craft navigated the bayou between Houston and Galveston, and a regular steamboat service was established along the route in 1837. The significance of Buffalo Bayou as a trade route only increased as the city developed. Shipments of cotton, the area's primary 19th-century export, out of Houston grew from 4,260 bales in 1842 to 11,359 bales by 1854.

However, the bayou was difficult to navigate, and after the Civil War local businessmen began efforts to dredge a better channel. In 1876, they opened a twelve-foot-deep waterway to Clinton, just below Houston. The U.S. government took over in 1881 and opened the deeper, wider Houston Ship Channel in 1914, making Houston one of the largest deepwater ports in the country. The channel opened just in time to earn an important role in the newly developing petroleum industry, which would become Houston's economic base for the 20th century. Refineries soon lined the Houston Ship Channel, where they could benefit from the established transportation network but remain sheltered from Gulf storms.

Both Houston and Frost Town, which was annexed by Houston sometime in the late 19th century, benefited from the bayou's increasing importance. Trade and transportation generated further commercial and industrial development on the banks of Buffalo Bayou. Near the Frost Townsite, the Bayou Compress Company was built for cotton processing around 1850. The Crystal Ice Factory generated electricity and produced block ice for the Pacific Fruit Express before refrigeration, operating from circa 1880 until it was demolished in 1935. The Two Houston Grain Elevator Company also operated nearby, on a site later used by Peden Iron and Steel. In the 1880s, an electrical generation plant was opened that later became the Chartered Houston Lighting and Power Company. By the 1920s intense commercial and industrial uses, tied primarily to rail and water transport, characterized most of the land along this part of Buffalo Bayou.

Bridges Over Buffalo Bayou

Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the section of Buffalo Bayou near Frost Town developed into a major industrial and commercial center, centered on its significance as a transportation hub. The city expanded rapidly on both sides of the bayou, and, especially after the introduction of the automobile, bridges became a necessity. However, navigation of the bayou was an integral part of the area's transportation network and could not be impeded. To effectively meet the needs of both water and land-based transport, bridges over Buffalo Bayou followed the more general evolution of bridge technology throughout the region and the country.

It is fitting that the first bridge constructed over Buffalo Bayou, mentioned above, was built for a railroad line. The expansion of railroads across the country in the mid-19th century generated significant advancement in bridge design and construction. Most 19th-century bridges were constructed of fabricated trusses made first of timber and later of iron and steel. As this type of construction did not easily allow much vertical clearance, bridges built over navigable waters often required a moveable structure. This was usually accomplished, as in the 1862 Center Span Swing Bridge mentioned above, by pivoting the main truss span on a central pier. The earliest swing bridges were operated manually with cables or ropes or simply nudged open by the vessel moving through. The first bridge built on the McKee Street Bridge site, which connected McKee Street on the north bank of Buffalo Bayou with Gable (now Chenevert) Street (the western boundary of Frost Town) on the south, was also a swing bridge. Constructed in 1908, its steel structure and motor-driven operation illustrated contemporary advancements in bridge design."

During the latter part of the 19th century, great strides were made in the development of reinforced concrete, and they were promptly applied to bridge construction. The earliest reinforced concrete bridges in Texas, such as the 1908 Euclid Avenue Bridge in Dallas, were closed-spandrel arches that mimicked stone masonry construction. Soon after, bridge engineers developed designs in which extraneous portions of the spandrel walls were left out, creating open spandrel arches composed of individual members. In 1914, two reinforced concrete, open-spandrel arch bridges were completed over Buffalo Bayou, at Main and San Jacinto streets. The central span of the 1275-foot Main Street Bridge crosses the bayou with a single concrete arch reinforced with the "Kahn System," which featured square reinforcing bars with spurs on each side embedded in the concrete. Reinforced concrete enabled much greater vertical lift, and these bridges provided enough clearance for navigating Buffalo Bayou without a movable span."

During the City-Beautiful movement in the first part of the 20th century, local governments across the United States began conscious efforts to improve the aesthetic features of their cities. This movement coincided with rapid growth in Texas, and several cities in the state began their own beautification programs. In 1912, the City of Houston passed a $250,000 bond issue to acquire land and improve its park system. The Houston Park Commission then hired a landscape architect and city planner Arthur C. Comey to develop a master plan for the city. Comey's plan, like many being produced at the time, featured a system of parkways and boulevards to link the central city with growing suburbs. Parkways were planned along Buffalo and White Oak bayous, and Comey recommended that the necessary bridges be built of concrete, in the simplest form of construction."

Several concrete bridges were constructed in the 1920s under Comey's plan, and many employed a type of construction that was increasing in popularity, the reinforced concrete girder. Early concrete girder bridges were constructed with steel wide-flange beams encased in concrete, but engineers soon learned that only parts of the beam were absorbing stress and that a series of smaller metal rods could achieve the same effect.

Concrete girder bridge construction was used increasingly in the expansion of the Texas state highway system after the organization of the State Highway Department in 1917, reaching the height of its popularity in the 1930s. The 1924 Sabine Street Bridge over Buffalo Bayou included six spans of continuous reinforced concrete girders supported on concrete bents.

Curved concrete fascia walls were used to give the appearance of an arch.

Houston's parkway boulevard and street extension plan continued into the early 1930s. City bridge engineer James Gordon (J. G.) McKenzie continued to design bridges with a similar aesthetic, using a simple concrete girder structure and an urn-style balustrade. McKenzie streamlined the bridges' form and ornamentation, reflecting more general trends in bridge design. The Almeda Road and Telephone Road bridges over Bray's Bayou and the Yale Street Bridge over White Oak Bayou were all built in 1931, and together they illustrate McKenzie's simplified version of City-Beautiful design.

McKee Street Bridge

A new bridge was also needed to replace the 1908 steel truss swing bridge built over Buffalo Bayou at McKee Street, which was demolished in 1928. The site of the McKee Street Bridge created some unusual complications. As small craft continued to navigate Buffalo Bayou, the War Department required that the bridge allow 100 feet of horizontal and 42 feet of vertical clearance, measured at right angles to the bayou. However, McKee Street does not run perpendicular to the bayou, intersecting instead at about a 77-degree angle.

No conventional bridge design could accommodate these difficult conditions, so the city's engineers, led by J.G. McKenzie, had to literally go to the drawing board. In the words of McKenzie himself, "We used all the mathematics at our command and we finally arrived at this design. We wore out many a scratch pad and pencil before we were through."

The design of which McKenzie spoke was truly unique. The McKee Street Bridge employed a common structural technology, the continuous reinforced concrete girder, but in an entirely singular fashion. Concrete girders were typically designed and used just like any other type of beam, in a rectilinear post-and-beam arrangement. However, those girders only allowed for relatively short individual spans. McKenzie's design for the McKee Street Bridge shaped the girders to correspond exactly to the calculated bending moment curve, resulting in wave-like forms that crest over the supporting piers. The girders' unique shape distributes the bulk of the bridge's load to the piers, enabling the 120-foot central span that was needed to achieve the required clearance.

McKenzie's system also proved to be economical, an especially important consideration in the Depression era. The construction contract, including the removal of the 1908 swing bridge, was let to Don Hall for $122,000, which was $35,000 less than comparative bids for a steel bridge to span the same crossing. Construction began in March, 1931, and the process was described in detail in a 1932 engineering periodical:

Concretes used were as follows: 2,000 lb. for the pier bases; 2,500 lb. for the abutments, pier shafts, and sidewalks; 3,000 lb. for piles, and 4,000 lb. for the floor system and girders. The 4,000-lb. concrete was mixed in the proportions of 94:160:282, dry mix, by weight. The water-cement ratio used was 4% gal. per sack of cement, the slump ranges from 6 to 8 inches.

The concrete stress in the girders, due to flexure, was limited to 1,100 lb. per sq. in., and special consideration was given to provisions for shearing stress. Tension reinforcing in the girders was made up of seven layers of 14-in., square rods over supports to take care of negative moments. Four layers of 1 and 1/4-in. square rods were provided in the 120-foot span, and five layers in the 85-foot span to take care of positive moments. Vertical stirrups (4 and 5/8 in.), with spacing, varied to meet the requirements, were placed in the middle 50 feet of the main span and in the corresponding portion of the approach spans. Over the piers 1 1/8-in. square inclined stirrups were hooked over and under 14-inch anchor rods.

The girder reactions were distributed over the pier tops by building out the bearings in the form of pilasters. The girder columns thus formed and the pier tops were reinforced with three interlocking spirals to provide for possible high stresses due to eccentricity in the application of the girder reactions.

The heavy reinforcing along the tops of the girders was supported on adjustable steel hangers carried by 6x6-in. wood frames resting in the falsework. These frames were spaced about 10 feet apart along the girders and were made wide enough between the legs to allow proper clearance for the construction of girder side forms. The specifications called for the placing of all the above reinforcing before the erection of girder sides. The top steel was held in position by the hanger system during the placing of the concrete. The hanger rods were unscrewed and withdrawn from the concrete one day after the concrete had been placed.

For convenience in construction and to guard against excessive shrinkage stresses, concreting of the superstructure was divided into five pours. The first and second pours were 70-foot sections over the two piers. The outer 50 feet of the two 85-foot spans were poured third and fourth, and the center 50 feet of the channel span was poured last. Sixteen1 and 1/4 in. inclined rods were placed through each girder construction joint, in addition to the steel provided to take care of design stresses. Construction joints were inclined on a slope of approximately 1 to 8 to ensure compressive action in the joint."

The detail in which the McKee Street Bridge was described in this 1932 article from Engineering News-Record illustrates the national interest that the design generated in the engineering community. The bridge's 120-foot main span was the longest of any concrete girder bridge at the time, and its undulating shape was wholly unique. Upon completion of the bridge, Houston city engineer J.M. Nagle said, "There is not another one like it anywhere," and H.S. Crocker, president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, was quoted as saying, "My God! That's a beautiful design." The McKee Street Bridge remained enough of an engineering marvel to be included in Carl Condit's survey American Building Art: The Twentieth Century, published in 1961. The bridge was also documented by the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER TX-80) as part of the Texas Historic Bridges Recording Project.

The design of the McKee Street Bridge was a unique and innovative response to the specific conditions of the site, which included the importance of Buffalo Bayou in Houston's commercial economy. The bridge illustrates how effective design melds technical and aesthetic concerns with the broader functions of the structure and the external factors that it affects. Houston's bridge engineers, led by J.G. McKenzie, demonstrated that they were masters of their craft, drawing not only from previous experience but also from their intrinsic knowledge of the materials and their technical capabilities. Their efforts to go beyond what was known and experiment were justly recognized by their peers throughout the country.

The McKee Street Bridge was truly a one-of-a-kind solution to a difficult problem, the essence of good design, and it is nominated in the area of engineering at the state level of significance.

Local significance of the structure:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 2002.