Cavenagh Bridge was proposed in 1867 and built by 1869 in response to decades of complaints about the inconvenience of getting from the northern administrative district to Commercial Square to the south. The bridge was built also to commemorate the founding of the Crown Colony of the Straits Settlements in 1867 and named after the last India-appointed Governor of Singapore, Sir William Orfeur Cavenagh. The cast-iron suspension bridge was shipped from Glasgow by P. & W. MacLellan, the same engineering firm that fabricated the steel for the new Telok Ayer Market.
