Stadium Bridge (Vienna)

The stadium bridge over the Danube Canal in Vienna connects districts 3 and 2, Landstrasse and Leopoldstadt .

Stadium bridge

location

The stadium bridge is located between Schlachthausgasse in the 3rd district and Stadionallee in the 2nd district, which leads directly to the Ernst Happel Stadium , the traditional Prater Stadium. The streets accompanying the Danube Canal are called Erdberger Lände (direction of travel downstream) and Schüttelstraße (direction of travel upstream, both with street number 227).

In the 3rd district near the bridge there is the Transport Museum Remise , the Federal Office for Civil Aviation , the air traffic control center and the Austrian State Archives , in the 2nd district the Atomic Institute of the Austrian Universities , the only active nuclear reactor in the Republic of Austria .

Until 1945 there was a station of the Pressburg Railway at the stadium bridge, which followed the course of the Danube Canal. The train ran on the front quay of the river and therefore did not cross the tram tracks that ran over the bridge until the summer of 1969 and on which trains on line 80 ( Rotunda Bridge - Prater Lusthaus ) could reach the Erdberg Remise .

history

1873-1936

In the year of the Vienna World Exhibition in 1873, the Fives-Lille company from Paris built the Kaiser Josefs Bridge with a span of 60 meters.

In 1920 it was renamed Schlachthausbrücke after the Sankt Marx slaughterhouse . Inferior material and increasing traffic led to the fact that the bridge had to be closed to vehicle traffic in 1929.

1936-1945

In order to cope with the rush of visitors at events in the Vienna stadium , appropriate access possibilities had to be created and so the stadium bridge was built as part of a job creation program of the state government.

The building was erected in 1936/1937 without a tender. A plan of the "Wiener Brücken- und Eisenkonstruktions AG" for the reconstruction of the Rotunda Bridge was determined to be carried out. The earthworks were carried out by “Engineers Mayreder, Kraus & Co”. H. Kutschera was responsible for the architectural design.

The bridge was designed as an arched bridge (span: 55 meters), the bridge over the two Vorderkai streets consists of reinforced concrete slab beams .

During the Battle of Vienna , the stadium bridge was blown up by the Wehrmacht.

1946-1961

In the autumn of 1946, work began on the construction of a temporary pioneer bridge using usable parts of the destroyed bridge.

This long-term temporary arrangement was opened on December 3, 1947 in the presence of the President of the National Council Leopold Kunschak , the Federal Minister Doctor hc Eduard Heinl , Oskar Helmer , Doctor Felix Hurdes and Karl Maisel , the Mayor of Vienna General Theodor Körner and the Vice Mayor Karl Honay and other guests.

One with the help of pioneers of the Red Army of the Stadium bridge erected temporary bridge down river had been washed away in 1945 by a flood.

1959– today

Between 1959 and 1969, today's bridge was built as a steel bridge with a total length of 82.3 meters - 55.2 meters of which span over the Danube Canal.

The design and the steel construction are from Waagner Biro , the design proposal from Kurt Schlauss .

On the occasion of the completion of the first construction lot, City Councilor Kurt Heller , following a bridge-building custom, used the jackhammer on February 25th, 1960 , in order to hammer some rivets into the structure himself .

During the construction period, the emergency bridge could be left in its location and road traffic started.

literature

• Christine Klusacek, Kurt Stimmer: The city and the electricity. Vienna and the Danube. Edition Wien, Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-85058-113-6 .
• Alfred Pauser: Bridges in Vienna - A guide through the history of construction. Springer Verlag, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-211-25255-X

Web links

Commons : Stadium Bridge  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 48 ° 11 ′ 48 ″  N , 16 ° 24 ′ 38 ″  E