YULE HEIBEL: BLUE BRIDGE BLUES: Economics, aesthetics, history collide

TO KEEP OR NOT TO KEEP OUR FAMOUS BLUE BRIDGE

On April 23, Victoria City Council voted “yes” on a motion to proceed with plans to replace, rather than rehabilitate, the Johnson Street Bridge.  I attended the meeting where that motion passed because I wanted to hear firsthand what the City’s engineers would present to Council.  I also wanted to hear Council’s deliberations, and see Council vote.  (Only Geoff Young voted against the motion.) 

I’ve been puzzled by the subsequent silence around Council’s decision.  Typically, everyone’s always second-guessing everything; the decision to destroy a storied artifact should surely have driven heritage advocates to the barricades.  But instead, the silence has been, as they say, deafening.

I’ve been second-guessing myself, too.  My initial reaction was, “Tear down that historic bridge?  Joke, … right?”  Then I was (briefly) swayed by the possibilities seemingly offered by a new bridge.

But I’m back with the old bridge.  Here’s why.  

First, the bridge is historically significant.  It’s an important document of 19th century industrialization, and an icon almost as closely identified with Victoria as Rattenbury’s buildings.  Second, the bridge reminds us of urban complexity (more on that further down).

The Johnson Street Bridge (1924) is a bascule bridge, meaning its movable leaf is held in balance and counterweighted during opening.  While counterweighted opening bridges have been around since ancient times, it wasn’t until the mid-19th century that engineers learned how to build really big ones.  Victoria’s Johnson Street Bridge is a product of that inventive and innovative area.

It was designed by Jospeh Strauss (1870 – 1938), who subsequently built San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge (1933 – 37).  Strauss wasn’t just any engineer: he patented the Strauss Bascule Bridge system, and used that system here.  The Blue Bridge is, literally, an embodiment of a heroic age that celebrated industrial progressivism.  There are relatively few bascule bridges left in North America overall, but there are even fewer of this particular sub-type.  Its historical significance is assured, yet its existence (in “heritage conscious” Victoria, no less) appears endangered.

Others better versed than I in local history can easily provide additional information on the bridge’s role in the city’s social and industrial history.  For now, let’s consider the arguments in favour of replacement.  Overwhelmingly, they hinge on cost, dislike of the bridge’s aesthetics and condition, and much anxiety over approaches and traffic patterns, specifically the allegedly difficult S-curve on the Vic West side, and difficulties posed by those approaches when sorting out bike and rail traffic.

In other words, we have a problem, and we think that the best way to fix is to start over with a clean slate.

We’re told it’s fiscally prudent to replace the bridge because repairing it is too difficult and expensive – and that no one wants to throw good money after a bad old ugly thing.  It’s the rational economic argument: something new will be cheaper (not to mention shinier), and above all, it will be money well spent.

Really?

Consider that the estimated costs aired thus far are just that, estimates.  At the April 23 meeting, engineers said a new bridge would cost $40 million.  By early May, that figure had shot up to $60 million, mainly because the original guesstimate had excluded work on the approaches leading to the bridge.  Now consider that if we want more than an off-the-shelf Walmart-style bridge designed offshore by computer, we can add another $20 million to the price tag (for design and architectural work, additional building/material costs, etc.).

Whether we rehab or replace, it will be expensive.  Really, there’s a philosophical argument here.  It’s one between radicals who want a clean slate, a fresh start, a simple solution, and those who counter that cities aren’t meant to run on simple solutions, can never have clean slates, and certainly are well past a “fresh start” best-by date.

Cities are old, complex, and difficult things.  Surgical strikes intended to clean them up, rationalize them, or otherwise erase their prior histories aren’t impossible to execute…it’s just that quite often, they’re sterile amputations.

To those who say the old Blue Bridge is ugly, I say it’s any early 20th century document that celebrates 19th century industrialization, undeniably part of our city’s history.  The bridge opens because ours is still a working harbour.  How it opens (via the patented Strauss Bascule Bridge system) is as significant as the fact that Victoria used to profit mightily from sealing and whaling, ship building, pulp-and-paper production, and milled lumber.  The technology of the bridge and its manufacture (steel girders) are part of this.  That’s the complexity of industry and history bred into the bones of the city.  Yes, we can replace all that, but doing so also removes our urban, industrial history.

Let’s talk about a new bridge at Bay Street instead.

There are many other issues relating to the bridge that need addressing – the problem is complex, the solutions really aren’t simple.  But here’s hoping this article won’t be an obituary.

 

Victoria resident Yule Heibel earned her doctorate in art and architectural history at Harvard and taught at MIT, Brown and Harvard.  She is the author of a book and numerous articles.

CCC reprint: FOCUS, www.focusonline.ca

June 2009, Vol. 21, No. 9

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