![](\"http:\/\/www.govcontracts.org\/Ford_Bridge_4.jpg\")
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Completed in 1927, in the same general era as my other <\/em>favorite Twin Cities bridges (the Central Avenue, Cedar, and Robert Street bridges), the Ford exudes art-deco.\u00a0<\/p>\n Let the bridge geek<\/a> speak:<\/p>\n The Intercity Bridge [the Ford’s official name]\u00a0is a reinforced concrete, open-spandrel, two-rib, continuous-arch bridge. Each of the three main arches has two five-centered ribs with a 300-foot span. The main spans are flanked by single arch spans of 139 feet each. The bridge is historically significant as one of the largest reinforced concrete bridges ever built in Minnesota and is a significant engineering accomplishment. The bridge is also historically significant as the major work of Norwegian-American engineer Martin Sigvart Grytbak. Although the deck was rebuilt and widened in 1972-1973, the bridge retains full engineering integrity as a monumental, continuous-arch bridge.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I grew up amid the last of the detritus of the Art Deco era;\u00a0Popeye cartoons, my grandma’s toaster, the occasional thirties-era car that soldiered on in Jamestown, and (I swear I remember this)\u00a0the odd old NRO poster stuck in the corner of someone’s garage.\u00a0\u00a0So the Ford Bridge seems – familiar, almost?\u00a0 Comfortable?\u00a0<\/p>\n The other impression you get – like with a lot of bridges from this era, when materials weren’t as strong and engineering was, while an exact science, very aware of its own limitations – is that it’s overbuilt.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n It’s graceful – not as clunky as, say, the Central Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis – but it still looks like a monument<\/em> as much as a bridge.\u00a0 It reminds you, in some ways, of the woodwork – hutches and buffets and bookcases – you find built into the houses of the era, with filigrees and ornamentation that nobody would design, much less pay for, in the dark ages of bridgebuilding that would follow a few decades later:<\/p>\n And of course, bridges were <\/em>monuments back then;\u00a0testimonials to the\u00a0wisdom and foresight of the people who planned them, the skill of the designers and builders,\u00a0and the\u00a0power of a city that could carry\u00a0people and\u00a0traffic over a mighty\u00a0river and a deep gorge, and do it in style.\u00a0<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.mnhs.org\/places\/nationalregister\/bridges\/nrraib\/images\/%7Braint7.jpg\")
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![\"Intercity](\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/thumb\/3\/39\/Ford_Parkway.jpg\/250px-Ford_Parkway.jpg\")
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