Hart Bridge in Jacksonville, Florida

The Hart Bridge is the four-lane continuous steel through truss that carries SR-228 over the St. Johns River in Jacksonville, officially the Isaiah David Hart Bridge.

The Florida Department of Transportation's Historic Highway Bridges of Florida, 2010 Update lists it as FDOT #720107, state site number 8DU1555, a 17-span bridge with a cast-in-place concrete deck, 3,844 feet in length. The report calls the bridge the hallmark feature of the five-mile Commodore Point Expressway, also known as the Hart Bridge Expressway, which connects to downtown Jacksonville.

Federal navigation guidance describes it a little differently. The U.S. Coast Pilot 4, Chapter 9 (NOAA, October 11, 2026), places the bridge at Commodore Point and calls it the Hart suspension bridge, with a clearance of 135 feet and 141 feet at the center. FDOT's engineering description, a through truss, is the one used on this page.

FDOT's report says construction began in 1964 and was complete by November 1967, while the Jacksonville Transportation Authority's timeline gives 1963 for the start and 1969 for the opening.

The JTA history, which traces the authority back to the Jacksonville Expressway Authority formed by the Florida State Legislature in 1955, lists 1963 as the year construction of the Commodores Point Bridge, the Isaiah David Hart Bridge, began, and 1969 as the year the Isaiah D. Hart Bridge opened. FDOT's bridge description gives 1964 and November 1967. The two state and local records leave the difference unexplained, so both are shown in the table below.

FDOT credits a team from three states. The bridge was designed by the consulting engineering firm Sverdrup & Parcel and Associates of St. Louis; the B.F. Diamond Construction Co. of Savannah built the substructure; and the Allied Structural Steel Co. of Chicago built the superstructure. The report's historic context chapter adds that in 1967 Jacksonville acquired an imposing continuous through truss bridge that provides a 1,093-foot clear channel for shipping on the St. Johns River.

The Hart Bridge's three-span main unit over the navigational channel is 1,093 feet long, which FDOT says makes it the longest bridge span of all highway bridges in Florida.

FDOT recommended the Jacksonville bridge as newly eligible for the National Register of Historic Places in 2010. Under Criterion A, it cites the areas of Community Planning and Development and Transportation for the bridge's associations with the historic and continued development of Jacksonville. Under Criterion C, for engineering, it calls the Hart an exceptional example of a continuous steel through truss bridge, one of only six through trusses verified as extant in Florida and one of two dating to the post-World War II period.

The same FDOT report also covers the other Jacksonville truss over the river. It describes the Mathews Bridge, FDOT #720076 on SR-10A, as a cantilevered steel Warren through truss built between 1951 and 1953 and determined eligible for the National Register by the Florida SHPO in October 2007.

Yes; FDOT's report says the Hart Bridge was toll-financed and is now a free road, and the JTA timeline dates the end of its tolls to 1988.

The JTA history records that in 1988 tolls at the Mathews Bridge, Fuller Warren Bridge, Hart Bridge, Trout River Bridge and J. Turner Butler Boulevard were removed. The FDOT report groups the Hart with the Dames Point Bridge as toll-financed crossings and notes that tolls originally financed at least three other bridges in Duval County: the Fuller Warren Bridge of 1954, the Trout River Bridge of 1926 and the Mathews Bridge of 1953.

The Jacksonville Expressway Authority became the Jacksonville Transportation Authority in 1971 as it entered the bus business, its timeline says. The same timeline lists the 1956 Riverside Interchange connecting the Fuller Warren Bridge to the Stockton exit, the first automatic tolls on the Fuller Warren Bridge in 1958 and two 1960 expressway links, to U.S. 17 and U.S. 1, among the authority's early Jacksonville projects.

The bridge is named for Isaiah David Hart, whom FDOT's report calls the founder of Jacksonville.

His family left a mark on the state as well. The Florida Department of State's biography of Ossian Bingley Hart says he was born in Jacksonville on January 17, 1821, the son of a founder of Jacksonville, and was the first of Florida's governors to be born in the state. Raised on his father's St. Johns River plantation, he openly opposed secession, took part in rebuilding Jacksonville's and the state's government after the war, was appointed an associate justice of the Florida Supreme Court in 1868, and served as Florida's tenth governor from January 7, 1873 until his death in Jacksonville on March 18, 1874.

Isaiah Hart also appears in a downtown Jacksonville church's own history. The Basilica of the Immaculate Conception's parish history says its first church lot, at the northeast corner of Duval and Newnan Streets, was acquired in 1847 for one penny from Isaiah David Hart, developer of the city of Jacksonville.

A federal BUILD grant awarded on December 6, 2018 gave the City of Jacksonville $12.5 million for Urban Core Riverfront Revitalization work that included demolishing the elevated Hart Bridge Expressway.

A press release from Congressman John Rutherford that day said the U.S. Department of Transportation had awarded two Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development grants worth $25 million for Downtown Jacksonville, $12.5 million to the JTA for its Bay Street Innovation Corridor and $12.5 million to the city. Under the city's project, the release said, Jacksonville would demolish the Hart Bridge Expressway and construct a ramp from the Hart Bridge to Bay Street and Gator Bowl Boulevard, with a Complete Street at ground level that included traffic calming measures and bicycle and pedestrian paths.

The table below sets out the dates the official records give for the Hart Bridge, from construction to the grant.

Older views of the Hart Bridge survive in a Jacksonville archive, and NOAA's Coast Pilot still lists it among the river's high-level crossings.

The University of North Florida library holds an undated postcard in its Northeast Florida Regional Postcards collection showing the Isaiah D. Hart Bridge looking northwest across the St. Johns River toward downtown Jacksonville, published by Marsh Post Card Service of Jacksonville.

For ships, the bridge is the third crossing upriver of the Jacksonville harbor's high-level spans in the Coast Pilot's list, after the Dames Point Bridge and the Mathews Bridge, whose clearances of 169 and 146 feet are higher than the Hart's 135 feet. The four bridges at Hendricks Point follow: the Main Street lift span at 40 feet down and 135 feet up, the Acosta at 74 feet, the railroad bascule at 5 feet and the Fuller Warren at 75 feet at the center.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against FDOT's 2010 historic bridge report, the JTA timeline, NOAA's Coast Pilot 4 Chapter 9, the Department of State governor biography, the Rutherford release of December 6, 2018, the Basilica parish history and the UNF postcard record.