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Central City Tour - Broad St. Bridge
 2. The Broad Street Bridge was once a 19th-century engineering marvel, the Erie Canal Aqueduct, built to carry the Erie Canal Waters over the Genesee River. Broad Street is now supported by the top tier of arches built over the aqueduct in the 1920s.
The aqueduct you are now looking at was built in 1842, replacing an earlier one. Constructed of Onondaga Limestone, the 1842 aqueduct was the only one on the Erie Canal to carry both a water trough and a towpath over a river. The success of the Erie Canal Aqueduct in withstanding the immense ice flows and high spring waters that destroyed earlier bridges and aqueducts influenced the design of Rochester’s other downtown bridges. Their low, broadly sprung arches are intended not to impede the flow of the river to the raceways.
The canal was abandoned in 1920, and subsequently the second tier was added to the bridge. From the 1920s to 1956, Rochester’s subway system occupied the former canal bed.
From the center of Main Street Bridge, look toward the right.
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