The year-long rehabilitation and preservation of the Wisconsin Avenue Bridge over the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, just below M Street in Georgetown, will start shortly. 

Originally called the High Street Bridge, the 173-year-old structure is apparently the District's oldest bridge and the only surviving work of five stone spans erected in Georgetown by the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company in the 1830's. The other four bridges were replaced after 1867 to provide greater clearances for canal boat traffic. 

The Canal Company proudly called its bridges "works of art" and adorned them with period commemorative plaques and monuments.  Perhaps the most prominent memorial is a stone obelisk four feet high erected in 1850 adjacent to the north end of the span as the "completion monument" for the canal. A stone on the downstream face of the bridge lists C. H. Dibble, Builder; Charles Mercer, President (of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company); Thomas Purcell, Superintendent; and Andrew Jackson, President. The upstream side includes similar plaques with the completion date, and the names John Cox, Mayor, and James Dunlop, Recorder, officials in the then-independent municipality of Georgetown, DC. 

The bridges were very likely designed by Benjamin Wright, Chief Engineer for the Canal Company and considered the "father of American civil engineering." The firm of Dibble, Beaumont & McCord built the 54-foot long structure.