The handsome, concrete and stone Range Line Road Bridge located across the Milwaukee River in the Village of River Hills was erected in 1935, five years after the village was established by wealthy Milwaukeeans who wanted to escape the city and move to the country. Many were also members of the Milwaukee Country Club, which had moved in 1910 to its present site in River Hills. These new residents built palatial estates around the club in order to protect it from the encroachment that had doomed its previous location in Shorewood. River Hills was an exclusive residential village.

Plans to replace the old truss bridge began in 1933. Wanting a distinguished structure compatible with the evolving countryside, the village held a competition. Invited to submit designs were five architects, among which was the firm founded by Alexander Eschweiler, as well as Harry Bogner. Judging the competition was a committee that included prominent Milwaukee architects Fitzhugh Scott, Gerritt J. De Gelleke and Roger Kirchhoff. Bogner’s design won. Working with the village engineer, Charles S. Whitney, himself a prominent engineer who recognized the value of historical precedents, Bogner planned a bridge inspired by several found in medieval England. It was a reinforced concrete structure that was sheathed with Waukesha-area limestone—into which Bogner put much effort in selecting. But the new bridge’s most distinguishing features are the twelve (six on each side) pedestrian refuge bays that extend the entire height of each pier. Such features were found on the 1439 Greyston Bridge and the sixteenth century Essex Bridge—both in England. Whitney’s and Bogner’s Range Line Road bridge has endured, and likely will remain for many years to come.