U Jánů Bridge

Jihlava City Council had discussed the construction of a tramway between the train station and the city centre as early as 1899, but the construction of the tramway, along with the necessary municipal power plant, did not commence until Vinzenz Inderka (1855–1934) was elected mayor in 1904. The 2,710-metre-long track was designed and built by the Viennese company Leo Arnoldi according to the design by engineer Friedrich Ross (1855–1918) and inaugurated on 26 August 1909. However, the wooden bridge over the Jihlávka River at Dřevěné mlýny near the U Jánů Inn would not have been able to support the eleven-tonne tram. In August 1908, the town commissioned a new bridge, made of reinforced concrete, on the basis of a limited tender for an estimated price of CZK 60,000, from a company that had already built the depot at no. 1427 on what is now Havlíčkova Street. Pittel & Brausewetter had been the holder of the authorisation to build reinforced concrete constructions according to Josef Melan's patent since 1892 and it consistently used his name in the documentation of the Jihlava bridge for building permits. However, Konrad Kluge (1878–1945), head of its Prague branch, maintained much closer contact with his teacher from the Prague Technical University. In June 1908, Melan made a structural calculation for its two identical vaults. With a span of 15.35 metres and a camber of 1.9 metres, they are 65 cm thick at the base and only 28 cm thick at the top. Their longitudinal rigid reinforcement is formed by a pair of 18 cm high rolled L-beams, bent into a circular arc and riveted together with C-profiles at the top. They are placed one metre apart, transversely connected in four points by similar 10 cm beams and fastened together above the central pillar to the support slab by flat connectors. The vault at the footings is further reinforced with round steel bars of 17 and 22 mm, which were used to reinforce the brackets that carry the pavement and railing structures, as had already been structurally designed by Konrad Kluge, out of the edges of the vaults. When renovating the bridge, which took place in 2012 based on Ladislav Huryta's project, it was necessary to replace the upper structure of the bridge and restore its decoration, but Melan's arches have been preserved. Today, it serves as a footbridge for pedestrians and cyclists. Its original purpose is recorded on a plaque and the historic 1,000 mm gauge rails can be seen embedded in the bridge deck.

LB