London Bridge may at one time have been falling down, but on this day 40 years ago it re-opened in its new home on the other side of the world. The original London Bridge was the final engineering project designed by the Scottish civil engineer John Rennie, although it was not until 1831, some ten years after his death, that the bridge was completed, under the supervision of his son, who was also named John Rennie.
The bridge was designed well before the era of the modern automobile, and by 1962 it was apparent that the bridge was not strong enough to support an increasing amount of traffic. The bridge was not actually falling down as suggested by the traditional nursery rhyme; in fact the nursery rhyme pre-dated the bridge by at least a century. Nonetheless the City of London decided to sell the bridge to an American businessman, Robert McCulloch.
Robert McCulloch, who was the chairman of an oil corporation, was also the developer of a retirement village at Lake Havasu City in Arizona. The stones from the original bridge were shipped from London to Arizona and reassembled there as an attraction for tourists and retirement home buyers. The reconstructed London Bridge now connects Lake Havasu City with an island in Lake Havasu.