Longfellow Bridge
Coordinates: 42 ° 21 '42 " N , 71 ° 4' 31" W.
| Longfellow Bridge | ||
|---|---|---|
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| use | Road traffic, subway | |
| Convicted | Massachusetts Route 3 , MBTA Red Line | |
| Crossing of | Charles River | |
| place | Boston and Cambridge | |
| Entertained by | Massachusetts Department of Transportation | |
| construction | Steel arch bridge | |
| overall length | 539 m | |
| width | 32 m | |
| Clear height | 8 m | |
| start of building | 1900 | |
| completion | 1906 | |
| opening | August 3, 1906 | |
| planner | William Jackson | |
| location | ||
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The Longfellow Bridge is an arched bridge opened in 1906 in the state of Massachusetts , which connects the Boston district of Beacon Hill with the city of Cambridge . It leads the four-lane Massachusetts Route 3 and the Red Line subway line of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) over the Charles River .
history
At the location of the bridge there has been a ferry connection to the opposite side of the river since Boston was founded in 1630 . From 1793, at the behest of Governor John Hancock , the wooden West Boston Bridge, which was tolled until February 1858, connected the two places at the same place . Their opening accelerated the growth of Cambridge, which until then could only be described as a village surrounded by swamps, to a large city.
In 1898 the Cambridge Bridge Commission was initiated, which should initiate the construction of a more efficient river crossing. The specifications for the new bridge provided above all a track connection for the trains of the "Boston Elevated Railway" (BERy), today's MBTA. William Jackson was appointed chief engineer , from whose pen the Harvard Bridge and the Charlestown Bridge over the same river came. Edmund M. Wheelwright, who had also previously worked in the city of Boston, was won as chief architect . After the two of them had traveled to France , Austria , Germany and Russia in search of role models for the new bridge and after political and constructive issues - such as whether a train , lifting or fixed bridge should be built - could be resolved, they began Construction work in 1900 . At the time, the project was still called Cambridge Bridge .
The West Boston Bridge was demolished in 1898. Until the opening of Cambridge Bridge, traffic was handled via a makeshift bridge .
The new bridge was ready for use on August 3, 1906, but the official opening was still almost a year away and took place on July 31, 1907. The bridge had four lanes of road - the two inner ones each had grooved rails and overhead lines for the tram - as well as underground rails in the middle on their own track and a footpath on the outside.
In 1927, the bridge after the 19th century, living in Cambridge writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , who wrote of his time a poem on the West Boston Bridge, in Longfellow Bridge renamed. In 1956 the bridge was extended by two fields in Cambridge.
The Longfellow Bridge today
The bridge has been under the supervision and administration of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation , or MassDOT for short , since 2009, the Massachusetts State Transportation Authority, which indicates the use of 28,600 vehicles and 90,000 passengers of the subway per working day. The tram systems were removed in 1952. The condition of the bridge can be described as extremely dilapidated. Apart from minor construction work in 1958 and 2002, practically nothing has been done to maintain the structure in the more than 100 years that it has stood. In 2007 it was also damaged by a fire in a maintenance corridor. In the summer of 2008, the bridge was finally classified as acutely prone to collapse. As a result, the footpath and the inner lane were closed on the north side, and a speed limit of around 16 km / h (10 mph) was imposed on the Red Line. The bridge was temporarily closed to trucks.
An extensive renovation is now planned for the period from spring 2011 to 2015, with an expenditure of 267.5 million US dollars . Preparatory work for this began in the summer of 2010. According to a MassDOT calculation, regular maintenance and repairs would have cost 81 million dollars over the years. The move is part of a multiple bridge rehabilitation program in Massachusetts - the state of construction of the Longfellow Bridge is by no means an isolated incident in the state. The program has a total volume of three billion US dollars.
Location & construction
Boston and Cambridge are on the east and west banks of the Charles River, which is dredged at the location of the bridge to the approx. 500 meter wide Charles River Basin. Shortly behind it is the mouth of the river into the Atlantic . A steel arch bridge with 11 fields was chosen as the construction method . The two fields built over land in Cambridge in 1956 are steel frameworks. Thus the bridge is now 13-spanned.
The most striking feature of the bridge and a Boston landmark are the four decorative towers at the corners of the middle bridge field, which can also be used to change the side of the street via a connection located under the carriageway. The shape of the towers earned them the nickname "Salt and pepper shakers" among the Bostonians. Influences of the Russian "confectioner style" - their spiritual fathers used Russia as a source of inspiration , among other things - are obvious.
The length of the bridge fields varies from approx. 31 meters near the abutments to 57.45 meters in the middle field between the towers. The clearance height of the latter is around eight meters, depending on the water level. The arches rest on hollow pillars made of stone, the largest of which - again those that support the towers - are around 16 meters long and 57 meters wide. The tower pillars are also adorned with carved ornaments in the style of Viking ships - a tribute to the Viking Leif Eriksson , who probably sailed the river, later known as the Charles River, around the year 1000. The footpaths are a curiosity: While originally both were three meters wide, the southern one is narrower today - how and when this came about is not known.
At the Boston end of the bridge, after a roundabout, via which Embankment Road or State Route 28 along the river bank can be reached, Cambridge Street joins. This forms the border between the city center and the posh Beacon Hill district . Above the roundabout is the Charles / MGH stop of the Red Line, whose platforms have now been extended to the Longfellow Bridge itself. Immediately behind it, the trains go underground at Beacon Hill.
On the Cambridge side, the bridge in the East Cambridge district is directly connected to the main streets Main Street and Broadway, which also form the boundaries of the (urban) inner city. There is also an entrance and exit to Memorial Drive as a counterpart to Embankment Road on the Boston shore. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is located on Main Street , while Broadway leads directly to the renowned Harvard University . This also means that both institutes are located in Cambridge and not, as is often claimed, in Boston. In Cambridge, too, the Red Line goes underground shortly after leaving the bridge, but the next stop, Kendall Square , is only about 600 meters inland at MIT.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b http://bostonhistory.typepad.com/notes_on_the_urban_condit/2006/01/west_bostonlong.html
- ↑ MassDOT homepage for the Longfellow Bridge ( Memento from October 17, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/07/31/a_legacy_of_neglect/
- ↑ Viser, Matt: Patrick signs $ 3b bill to fix bridges , boston.com. August 5, 2008. Retrieved September 11, 2008.
Web links
- MassDOT homepage for the Longfellow Bridge ( Memento from October 17, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- Longfellow Bridge at structurae ...
- ... and in the Library of Congress.
