Photo by Mason Architects for Honolulu High Capacity Transit Corridor Project
This bridge originally carried Kamehameha Highway to the Ewa Junction and represents a road-straightening improvement project that replaced an earlier, more winding, road segment and smaller bridge crossing of Waiawa Stream. Merritt A. Trease was the design engineer. This bridge carried Kamehameha Highway until the bypass was built in about 1940, when this bridge and road segment became an extension of Farrington Highway. It is a good example of an early 1930s continuous deck girder bridge. Its relatively long length indicates the importance of this transportation link in the circle-island main road system.
This bridge is eligible for the Hawaii State Register of Historic Places because of its association with the development of the Waipahu community and the transportation history of the area. It is also eligible because it is a good example of concrete deck girder bridges of the late 1930s.
Design Details:
This six-span, reinforced-concrete bridge is a continuous deck girder type, measuring 332 feet in length, about 34 feet in width, and approximately 30 feet in height above the stream bed. The concrete parapets of the bridge are pierced to form balustrades with arched- topped openings. This arched-top design was a standardized pattern of Territorial Highway Department bridges of the early 1930s. The balustrades on this bridge are divided by stanchions into six segments, each about 20' long. Each segment has cast end pieces with a recessed panel; each pair of end pieces forms a stanchion. The end segments of parapets are slightly curved as they approach the larger end stanchions. These end stanchions are rectangular, and have rectangular panels with an incised border. The panels are inscribed "Waiawa" and, on the opposite end stanchion, "1932."
Waiawa Stream Bridge
- Built: 1932
- Will be Adversely Affected by rapid transit
Photos and text dervived from Study of Potential Effects to Historic Properties prepared by Mason Architects for the Honolulu Rapid Transit Corridor Project, City and County of Honolulu, 2008
View Historic Sites Adversely Affected by Honolulu's Future Rail in a larger map
Historic Sites to be Adversely Affected by the Honolulu Rail Project
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