Curatorialist

Bridges are a small special interest of mine. Although I have done my own self-education on them, I am not remotely an educated bridge person. I know the basics and can recognize most bridge types and I know how they function, from a broad physics standpoint, but beyond that my love for them is purely visual and romantic. I sometimes peruse websites on bridges, trying to get smarter, but inevitably the math and materials discussions lose me. But,  perhaps not coincidentally, searching for bridges leads me to places that I otherwise would never go: into historical records of small town America all the way to Brooklyn, London, Seoul or Brazil.

But the construction of my love affair with bridges started a long time ago in an unlikely place: San Diego. Bridges in the beach community I grew up in are a necessity for a variety of reasons: for one, the train runs along the coast from downtown San Diego all the way up until it heads inland up past Oceanside. In order for the train to stay on the coast, it must avoid both the highway, which runs the same path, as well as numerous inlets of ocean water. And for two, like any city, San Diego became a city of freeways long after it was a city of interconnected roads which connected one small community to another. And since freeways are egotistical in nature and like to cut a bee-line from center to center, all those little roads that got spliced along the way had to be bridged. So, overhang passes are a thing of plenty. Here’s the one that first opened my eyes to the magnificence of simple bridge construction, on the 805 freeway in San Diego – a concrete arch bridge of the most gorgeous kind:

And here’s a similarly constructed one, the Lilac Road Bridge, on i-15. Little different view.

But, really, the juxtaposition of bridges and beaches is what makes Southern California bridges so unique. Something not very considered in the stories of America’s bridges which seem to center more around our countries internal rivers and external water-ringed cities, like Portland, New York and San Francisco. San Diego, of course, fits this description, too, and the Coronado Bridge has to be among the nation’s greats (site of my first, and last, half marathon). However my personal experience with bridges happened along the beaches, on catwalks and from within train rides I took from Del Mar to Los Angeles, back and forth from Mom to Dad.

Every city has its bridges and, for the most part, other than freeways, it is what you are crossing combined with the construction of the bridge itself that makes the entire thing interesting. When I look at bridge designs from an architectural standpoint, I don’t find it quite as interesting and I’m, therefore, not as keen on bridges that are bizarre or construction-for-construction’s-sake. And certainly I am not a fan of bridges to nowhere. What is most fascinating is the story that gets told from ledge to ledge. I always imagine a group of engineers, lead by one guy who is perhaps one part engineer and one part dreamer, sitting on the edge of a some kind of expanse, or body of water, thinking to themselves: “How?” To me, that’s the root of exploration, creativity and innovation and, perhaps why the Brooklyn Bridge is my favorite of them all. The story of John Roebling, and his son, and the construction of the world’s best bridge (IMO), is a legend that is both personal and monumental, glorious and tragic. It is a story about America, told through a bridge. There is a Ken Burns documentary on the subject well worth viewing.

Here are a few shots I took of some bridges up in Oregon:

Howe Truss

A truss bridge - Whipple Construction?