{"id":1664,"date":"2007-11-30T12:49:33","date_gmt":"2007-11-30T17:49:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1664"},"modified":"2007-11-29T22:29:34","modified_gmt":"2007-11-30T03:29:34","slug":"bridges-of-ramsey-county-the-wabasha-bridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1664","title":{"rendered":"Bridges of Ramsey County – The Wabasha Bridge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bridge design has gone through a lot of different phases.\u00a0 In ancient Rome, the mere existence of the bridge, given the materials, labor and knowledge of engineering of the day, was a statement in its own right:<\/p>\n

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The engineering – the simple arch being the state of the load-bearing art back then – was adapted to the materials (wood, stone, iron) and workmanship of the day.\u00a0 It carried weight without actually needing material below the weight itself – which was a major advance.<\/p>\n

Over time, as developments in engineering made it possible to add less-utilitarian features – design – to the bridge:<\/p>\n

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The goal, of course, was to make bridges into statements – about the people who designed, built, and above all authorized and paid for the bridges.\u00a0 “We can bridge the mighty [East\/Mississippi\/Colorado\/James] river – we can do anything!”.\u00a0 The function of the bridge was on full display – the suspension cables, the trusses, the intricate supports that, working with the materials of the day, kept these structures and their passengers up in the air where they belonged.<\/p>\n

Then, times changed.\u00a0 As materials improved (steel became cheap and ubiquitous) and architectural tastes morphed (modernism\/Bauhaus\/what have you intersected with Urban Renewal and the building of the Interstate highway system), the philosophy changed again.\u00a0 The statement wasn’t so much “we can surmount this obstacle” as “this obstacle never existed, Winston<\/strike>“.\u00a0 The bridge, like the obstacle it surmounted, became an unobtrusive, almost unnoticeable, element in the freeway experience.\u00a0 This seemed to be the dominant philosophy from the fifties through the late eighties.<\/p>\n

It’s the philosophy that led us to vanilla concoctions like the “Dartmouth Bridge”, carrying I94 over the Mississippi:<\/p>\n

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From the middle lanes, it’s possible to have no idea you’re on a bridge, much less crossing a stunning expanse of the Mississippi Gorge, at all.<\/p>\n

In the nineties, the philosophy changed – again.\u00a0 Thankfully.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I push my conservative penurity aside to note that the Wabasha Bridge<\/a> – crossing the Mississippi on Wabasha avenue over Raspberry and Harriet islands – was a long-awaited return of style to bridge design.<\/p>\n

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Yeah, it looks a little bit like something you’d look at at the Walker gallery, or maybe buy at Ikea.\u00a0 The City of Saint Paul website on the bridge notes (in the future tense, on a page written before the bridge was built, and in dire need of update)…:<\/p>\n

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