The Bridges of Rock Creek Park

Posted: August 7th, 2007 | Author: Rob Goodspeed | Filed under: Bridges, District of Columbia, Parks, Rock Creek Park, Urban Development |

The unfortunate collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota last week has put attention on the country’s bridges. Many of the Washington, D.C. bridges are quite old, and well documented in the Library of Congress’ Historic American Engineering Record, available online through the American Memory website. The images here and more are all available on the site - simply click on the image and then the permalink in the description on Flickr.

Although the Washington region’s largest and best known bridges cross the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers, for some reason I am more interested in the bridges that cross Rock Creek Parkway. Bridging the river, road, and the natural gorge, the bridges are easily overlooked, but possess a subtle drama.

One of the most dramatic is Connecticut Avenue’s Taft Memorial Bridge. When it was completed in 1907 for almost $900,000, it was thought the largest unreinforced concrete bridge in the world. A series of excellent Historic American Engineering Record drawing illustrates the bridge’s design and construction.

This much smaller bridge connecting Pennsylvania Avenue to Georgetown contains its own story. Encased in cement dating from 1916, the bridge still contains large cast iron pipes constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1856.

To Rename Triborough for R.F.K., $4 Million

By William Neuman

Kerry Kennedy, founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, at a media briefing on the renaming of the Triborough Bridge at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s headquarters. (Photo: John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times)

New York State will have to spend $4 million to replace road signs changing the name of the Triborough Bridge to the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, a spokesman for the State Department of Transportation said on Thursday.

The spokesman, Adam Levine, acknowledged that the state is in a financial crisis and he said the money would not be spent right away. Read more…

A Painter’s Brush With the Bridges of New York

By Tina Kelley

“N.Y. Tramway II” (Antonio Masi, 2008) Enlarge this image.

New York, a city of five boroughs spread across four land masses, would be a giant clump of Bayonnes were it not for the 2,027 bridges linking the pieces together.

And for eight years, Antonio Masi has painted these bridges, or at least the major ones. Not with a foot-wide brush, gray paint and a safety harness, but with watercolors.

His favorite is the 59th Street Bridge, because his maternal grandfather, a man he never met, had hauled steel girders to build it. Mr. Masi’s family settled on the Upper East Side, not far from the bridge, also known as the Queensboro.