Hmmmm. You might be right, but I'm just thinking about what I read about difficulties replicating the Saturn V rockets, which obviously were built much later than 100 years ago, under extreme scrutiny of top-of-the-line engineering of their time, and yet, we can't build them again from original blueprints.
The issue seems to be that despite having extremely detailed blueprints a lot of the actual assembly was left to skilled welders and technicians on site, and they used techniques which were not documented. So You can look at the blueprint, you can look at the actual remaining Saturn-V rocket, and still have no idea how two elements were welded together to withstand launching into space, because it's just not documented anywhere. The person who did the weld is long dead, so in a way, an extremely important element of assembly is lost and has to be replicated by experimentation.
I'd imagine it's the same with bridges - blueprints might say that a column of specific durability was used, but it won't say how it was made, and therefore you won't know what can break inside it.
Edit: corrected Atlas to Saturn V