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.Cavenagh Bridge was used for all manner of traffic, from carriages to rickshaws to pedestrians. When Anderson Bridge was built in 1909, heavier traffic was diverted there, and Cavenagh Bridge was declared off limits to “vehicles exceeding 3 cwts, cattle and horses”, before it was converted into a pedestrian bridge. A cwt refers to a centum weight, also known as a hundredweight, which is about 50 kg (112 lb)
