Bridge Day #1: The Broadway Bridge

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Today is Bridge Day for no other reason than I had three bridge pictures to post.

We at The ZehnKatzen Times do not plan on making this a repeating thing, although I live in a city that has bridges and I adore them, they'll sneak in here from time to time.

None of them are pierless, I'm afraid.

From last week, then, a bridge I don't have so many pictures of: the Broadway Bridge. It's a Rall-type bascule (Rall after the man who devised this particular method, and bascule meaning drawbridge with a leaf or two leaves as the draw span) that was built in 1913. It connects Broadway on the east to Broadway on the west, and that precedence is important because Broadway, in Portland, was born on the east side and only became a west side street after this bridge connected it to Seventh Street North and the name was extended. 

Until the Great Renaming, it was known as Broadway south of Burnside, Broadway North north of Burnside, and East Broadway east of the Willamette.

The connection, which completes a stringing of Broadway through four of the city's now-six address areas, makes a most unique route of Broadway, technically both a Street (east of the river) and an Avenue (west of the river). As I understand it, though, the correct rubric is simply Broadway, no Ave or St, though there are some older blades on the east side that may still say NE Broadway St, and are being superseded by the new-look street blade design.

The design of the lift mechanism makes for some slow bridge lifts. Multnomah County's page on the Rall design cites it as the slowest lift of all the bridges, with average lift times of ten minutes.

Having been caught on the Broadway during some of those lifts, I can confirm. It takes forever. If you have to be somewhere and time is tight, use another bridge, if you can.

You'll thank me later for this advice, I'm sure.