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Madison Street (Lyric Opera) Bridge (Google Image)
Opened on September 17, 1922 |
Happy
birthday, today, September 17, to the Madison Street (Lyric Opera) Bridge,
opened on this day in 1922.
You know, it
isn’t easy keeping the people of a big city happy . . . we’ve learned that once
again in the past week. Over a century
ago, though, there were so many more ways that a person’s patience could be
tried. Combine smoke, horse manure,
cobblestone streets, and a metropolis bound in by a lake on the east and split
in two by a river flowing on the north and south . . . you would have had some
pretty good reasons to feel a little moody once in awhile.
Back in the
old days, one group of city employees who took more abuse than almost any other
was the bridge tenders. In September of
1872 The Chicago Tribune ran an editorial that began, “One would suppose that
bridge-tenders were furnished the city on contract, so inferior in quality are
they. They are despotic, and exercise a
tyranny over the travelling public in this city, but the people have risen
against despotism and won’t have it displayed by bridge-tenders.”
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| With crowds like this, when the bridge was tied up, things could back up in a hurry (Google Image) |
The
condemnation came after an incident at the Madison Street Bridge, where on the
previous night the bridge-tender had raised the bridge and kept it open for 22
minutes, causing traffic to back up all the way to Jefferson Street to the west
along with “three blocks of profane language.”
Such an occurrence was commonplace in a city where the river made
Chicago the busiest port in the United States.
One of the
problems in the old days was the type of bridge that crossed the Chicago
River. Nearly all of these early bridges
were swing bridges that had a locating pin and supporting ring around which the
bridge rotated at its center of gravity, a location almost exactly in the
middle of the channel. In a modest river
like the Chicago River, putting the mechanism for the movement of the bridge as
well as the open bridge, itself, directly in the middle of the channel made for
some interesting times.
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| The Madison Street swing bridge of 1891 -- note the width of the river on each side (Google image) |
In 1879
Mayor Carter Harrison, himself, intervened directly at the Madison Street
Bridge. On the evening of September 17
as folks were streaming across the river on their way to the theaters on the
east side, the bridge was raised to allow the propeller ship Chicago to
pass. It was 45 minutes before the ship
worked her way through and at some point during that time Mayor Harrison “bore
down on the craft from the West Side approach, and stepped down the abutment
and jumped aboard the propeller and went in search of the Captain . . .” [Chicago
Tribune, September 18, 1879]
By the time
the Mayor and the Captain squeezed the boat through the draw, streetcars were
lined up “from the river to Halsted Street.”
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| Things got pretty crowded back in the early 1900's -- the river at Rush Street (Google Image) |
There were
incidents more serious than just the delay of theatergoers. On May
9, 1890 the Coral, in tow of the D. S. Babcock, was demasted when the
bridge lock would not work. Anticipating
an open bridge since the bridge bell had rung and the bridge had been cleared
of horses and wagons, the Coral was unable
to halt its progress and lost its foremast and superstructure.
By the early
1890’s the bridge at Madison Street was in desperate need of repair with the
western approach shifting toward the river to such an extent that the city
engineer thought that a heavy load would bring it down.
So in a
practical move, literally, on March 12, 1891 the city loaded the old Madison Street
Bridge, which had stood since 1876, onto two barges and moved it north a block
to Washington Street. There the 180-ton
bridge was settled on new piers that had been completed a year earlier.
The Tribune wrote of the event, “Since 1876 the
Madison street structure has stood in sunshine and storm, uncaring of
conditions and ever the faithful servitor of a careless public. It will be remembered as one public servant
within the corporate limits of Chicago which executed its public office as a
public trust.”
The new
bridge at Madison Street was supposed to be completed within three months,
which today looks like a colossal piece of optimism. On September 13, 1891 The Tribune wrote, “Madison street for the distance of a block or
more on each side of the river resembles the deserted main street of a Southern
village during camp meeting time, so far as traffic or trade is concerned. The stores are barren of customers and the
few clerks who have been retained occupy themselves during the day in keeping
up the circulation of their blood.”
Finally, by
the middle of October of 1891 the new bridge was completed.
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| Chicago RIver at Madison Street, somewhere between 1910 and 1920 (Chicago Daily News Archive) |
The new
Madison Street bridge, bigger than the previous one, 197 feet long and able to
accommodate four horse teams abreast, was finished later that year, but because
it still held to the traditional swing bridge system of engineering, trouble
was bound to continue.
On November
25, 1909 The Tribune reported,
“Madison street bridge was wrecked yesterday by the bow of the iron freighter Bethlehem of the Lehigh Valley
line. The bridge was thrown off its
axis, many of the rollers on which it rides were broken from their journals and
the iron supports of the mechanism were broken and twisted.”
Happy Thanksgiving.
The vessel’s
master, Captain W. J. Flanders saw as he approached the bridge that things were
going to be close, and he called for a tug to assist. Before the tug could get a line aboard the
freighter, it crashed into the bridge.
One woman and 20 men were marooned on the bridge itself, and they were
taken aboard the towboat Protection
by means of a ladder and ferried to the west side of the river.
It was clear
that a new bridge design was needed, a new system of engineering that would
accommodate a huge amount of pedestrian and freight traffic, along with the
city’s surface lines while, at the same time, allowing more room in the channel
for the tremendous river traffic serving the city’s grain elevators, lumber
yards, and warehouses.
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| The Cortland Street bridge, the first trunnion bascule bridge in the country (JWB, 2010) |
By 1902 the
answer to the problem was worked out and the first trunnion bascule bridge was
built across the river at Cortland Street. (For information on this bridge check out this blog.) In this type of bridge a complex interworking of gears, counterweights, and motors lift the cantilevered roadway above and away from the channel.
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| Model of the new bridge, displayed in 1906 (Chicago Tribune) |
By 1906 a
large plaster model of the proposed Madison Street Bridge was placed on exhibit
at the annual architectural exhibit of the Art Institute. It was a sleek design, gussied up with some artistic
flourishes, specifically proposed groups of statuary at the ends of the span to
be executed by Chicago sculptors funded through the Ferguson fund.
Thirteen years later work on the
substructure of the new bridge began on December 1, 1919 as, to the south, the
new Roosevelt Road bridge was also being erected. Things sailed along for a while with the
Madison Street bridge’s superstructure completed by November of 1920 . . . and
then the money dried up and construction ground to a halt. With Madison Street and Roosevelt Road severely
compromised at the river, voters had to decide in June whether or not to
approve a $3,400,000 bond issue to finish the two projects. Arguments were heated as both sides of the
issue passionately argued their case.
In a June 4,
1922 editorial The Tribune
proclaimed, “The Madison street bridge continues as a heroic monument of the
agony of incompetence, the triumph of demos, shapeless, useless, and reaching
steel arms into the heavens as if it were going down a third time and forever
in the current of the river. It is a
mass of twisted, distorted, and convulsed, inchoate, but with a glimpse of some
design thwarted before it could take form.”
Despite the
language, the paper still urged the populace to approve the bonds. “Great as the waste of money is, it is not so
great a waste as that of these disordered thoroughfares. The citizen may be as mad as he cares to be,
but he needs the bridges and if he has to pay twice for them let him know in
such fashion his affairs are run.”
Finally, on September 17, 1922 the bridge was ready for the public. Its debut left only one swing bridge left in
the loop district at Clark Street. The new bridge’s
sidewalks were spacious by contemporary standards – 13 feet, 6 inches wide (the
old bridge had sidewalks measuring 5 feet, 6 inches). According to the City Engineer Thomas
Pihlfeldt, the new bridge contained 1,800 tons of steel and the machinery to
move it weighed 250 tons. There were 4,000
yards of concrete in its substructure.
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| Note the sidewalks on the old swing bridge (Chicago Daily News archive) |
It was quite
a difference from the first bridge crossing the river at Madison Street back in
1849, made of floating logs, and costing $1,000, which was paid by subscription
from adjacent property owners.
A great
description of the bridge can be found on the outstanding website www.historicbridges.com. The writers point out that this was the first
bascule bridge in the city where the trusses were arranged so that part of the
truss was above the deck, creating a buffer between vehicular and pedestrian
traffic while increasing clearance under the bridge since the trusses, which were raised to waist height above the deck, allowed more clearance under the bridge.
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Bridge truss raised above roadbed, separating traffic from pedestrians. Also note
design of railings and bridge houses. (www.historicbridges.com) |
The website
goes on to observe, “This bridge stands out among the bridges of Chicago as one
of the most historically and technologically significant since it is the first
example of a design that Chicago would use in construction on many bridges
during a period of over 40 years. It
also retains ornate sidewalk railings that greatly contribute to the visual
beauty of the bridge.”
It is a beautiful, sleek span in a place that where its beauty and sleekness is an absolute necessity, just to the south of the exquisite Art Deco 1929 Civic Opera Building.
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