[6] In 1777, British troops built a pontoon bridge here during their occupation of Philadelphia, and the newly independent Americans subsequently kept it up, replacing parts as necessary after floods.

In 1838, the PW&B built the first permanent bridge here to complete the first direct rail link from Philadelphia to Wilmington, Delaware, and Baltimore, Maryland.

The bridge did not initially allow locomotives to pass so the cars were (at least until 1844) pulled by horses over the river and northward along three miles of track to the terminus of the PW&B.

[7] "The mechanism, located on the swing span and driven by steam, is typical of movable bridge construction at the turn of the twentieth century," wrote historian Justin Spivey.

[9] Under the proposal, the bridge would be raised some 33 feet (10 m) so that boats — in particular, a towboat used to bring oil barges to the Trigen power plant upstream — could pass without swinging it open.

[2] In November 2017, Conrail transferred ownership of the bridge to the City of Philadelphia, which planned a $13 million project to replace the truss with a bike-trail structure.

Keisha McCarty-Skelton, a spokesperson for the city government's Department of Streets, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the delays were caused by “typical construction issues,” truss design and fabrication issues, and pandemic-related supply chain delays that “affected procurement of project materials such as truss steel and movable bridge steel machinery.” In 2020, a barge collided with the bridge, causing a legal fight over liability.