Like most of our bridges so far including the previous bridge Torensluis there has been a bridge at the location of Lijnbaansbrug for centuries.
The bridge is drawn on the map of Pieter Bast dating from 1599. There the bridge is located in the Lijnbaan Steech to the Blaeuwe Burchwal. Also Balthasar Florisz. van Berckenrode with his map of a quarter of a century later has drawn the bridge. Reinier Vinkeles captured the bridge in a drawing in 1785. The modern history of the bridge begins in 1883, when a fixed bridge was erected only on pile foundations to replace a drawbridge. This bridge began to show signs of deterioration in 1962, with cracks forming in the abutments. The bridge piers were also no longer upright because of the many collisions they suffered and the road surface no longer met the requirements. The municipality released a budget of 398,000 guilders to also widen the bridge from 5.40 to 9 meters. The work lasted until at least 1964, as witnessed by a photo in Algemeen Handelsblad , which showed that a dragline, including the flat barge on which it stood, had sunk in the Singel. At the time, Amsterdam had its bridges designed by the Public Works Department , where Dick Slebos and Dirk Sterenberg designed most of the bridges. However, this bridge was designed by Cornelis Johannes Henke (initial CJH). The bridge is slightly skewed over the water. The bridge is surrounded on four sides by all kinds of municipal or national monuments . She herself is too young for that.
Like the Lijnbaanssteeg, the bridge is named after the ropeways of the rope mills, which were located here when the area outside the Singel (then the city boundary) was still an industrial area.
Architects Dienst de Publieke Werken (Public Works Department)
1963: Cornelis Johannes Henke
