Gray's Ferry Bridge has been the formal or informal name of several floating bridges and four permanent ones that have carried highway and rail traffic over the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. The bridge today is a four-lane divided highway bridge, built in 1976, that carries Grays Ferry Avenue from the Grays Ferry neighborhood on the east bank, over the river and the Northeast Corridor railroad tracks, to the Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood of Kingsessing.
This 1999 photo looks northwest at the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad Bridge No. 1. and, behind it, the Grays Ferry Avenue Bridge.
From 1777 and through at least 1839, a series of floating bridges offered passage at Gray's, or Lower, Ferry. 1816 painting by Joshua Rowley Watson
1856 drawing of the floating bridges that were replaced in 1838.
The pontoon bridge at Gray's Ferry was decorated for the arrival of President-elect George Washington in Philadelphia on April 20, 1789. A rope line indicates the continuing use of a ferryboat alongside the bridge.
The Schuylkill River is a river in eastern Pennsylvania. It flows for 135 miles (217 km) from Pottsville southeast to Philadelphia, where it joins the Delaware River as one of its largest tributaries.
The Schuylkill River with Center City Philadelphia's skyline in the background, September 2007
Winter scene
The Strawberry Mansion Bridge at dusk
The Fairmount Water Works on the Schuylkill River were once the source of Philadelphia's water supply and are now an attraction in Fairmount Park.
