Blackwell Brook Bridge
Windham County, Brooklyn. Structure built 1986, covered 2010, 35 ft. long. Also called Levi's Mill Bridge, notable for see-through siding on a Howe truss frame.
Blackwell Brook Bridge, also known as Levi's Mill Bridge, carries Fitzgerald Road over Blackwell Brook in Brooklyn. The underlying bridge structure dates to 1986, but for its first couple of decades it stood uncovered — an open Howe truss doing an ordinary job on a back road. That changed in 2010, when the town decided to give the bridge a proper covering and a local builder named Sigfridson donated the roofed enclosure to make it happen.
What makes Blackwell Brook a little unusual among covered bridges is its siding: rather than the solid clapboard walls typical of the style, the bridge's covering leaves gaps that let you see straight through to the Howe truss members underneath as you approach, a design choice that turns the bridge's own structural engineering into part of the visual experience. At 35 feet, it's one of the shorter and newer covered bridges in Connecticut, a good example of how the tradition has kept evolving even in an era when almost nothing requires a wooden roof to survive the weather.
