Famous people's places / Detroit – Belle Isle
Belle Isle Bridge (1889–1915)
Closed – archive entry · 1915
The original span to Belle Isle, from which Harry Houdini made his famous handcuffed river jump in 1906, before it burned down in 1915.
01 / The story of this place
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Completed in 1889 by the Milwaukee Bridge & Iron Works, Detroit's first bridge to Belle Isle was a pin-connected steel truss span crossing the Detroit River from East Jefferson Avenue. On November 27, 1906, Harry Houdini climbed onto the bridge's draw span, had himself handcuffed, and leapt into the frigid Detroit River below, one of the escape artist's early river jumps and part of the stunt tradition that built his fame. On April 27, 1915, a tar-heating cart tipped over on the bridge, igniting the creosote-block roadway; the fire burned so hot that it collapsed the span, in an incident some Detroiters darkly suspected the mayor had welcomed as an excuse to build a better bridge. A temporary timber span opened in 1916, and the permanent Douglas MacArthur Bridge, a concrete arch structure, replaced it in 1923 and still carries traffic to Belle Isle today.
- Detroit's first Belle Isle bridge, completed in 1889
- Site of Harry Houdini's handcuffed river jump on November 27, 1906
- Destroyed by fire on April 27, 1915
- Replaced by the Douglas MacArthur Bridge in 1923, still in use today
Famous Detroiters
Famous people tied to this place 1
Lexicon entries for the people who lived, worked, performed or liked to spend time here.
- Harry Houdini 1874–1926 · illusionist, escape artist, stage and film performer
Related place
On Nov. 27, 1906 Houdini jumped handcuffed from the bridge's draw span into the Detroit River. That bridge burned in 1915; the MacArthur Bridge (1923) now crosses to Belle Isle here.
Sources & fact check · Checked: 2026-09-25
An independently written bilingual guide. This collection is not an attendance-based ranking.
03 / Events
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