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It’s the end of August and somewhere in Boston there is a betting pool. Five dollar bills are wedged behind the loose corner of a whiteboard, and the board is filled with a messy scrawl of names and times.
The bridges over Storrow drive are a lucky bunch of bastards. September 1st. Moving Day. Allston Christmas. Doesn’t matter what you call it, someone in a rented truck is going to ignore the “no trucks” signs, the chains hitting the cab as they enter, the warning sign on their GPS, and all common sense. It’ll be a perfect can-opener, top peeled back, boxes on the road, and at least 10,000 cars backed up. So common there’s a verb for it: storrowing.
And whoever picked the closest time, without going over, gets to take home that pool.
Like I said, lucky bastards. Everyone knows about them.
Some bridges are famous because of what they do: defy gravity, majestically cross impossible spans. They have Names: the Brooklyn Bridge, the Rainbow Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Sydney Harbor Bridge, the Ponte Pietra of Verona, the Union Chain Bridge, the Bridge of Arta, you get the idea.
Pretty much anyone who’s a suspension or cable-stayed ridge is going to be huge and at least locally famous. Boston has the Zakim, designed by the Swiss civil engineer Christian Menn. Dallas has one of Calatrava’s: Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge.
Any stone arch bridge that stands the test of time is going to show up in every tourist instagram. 2,000 years old and some of them don’t look a day over 50! But those lucky ladies bear well under pressure; the elements weather their faces to a timeless beauty.
None of us poor suckers built out of steel are going to become picturesque, we’re just going to rust away.
And then there are the culturally famous bridges like the Pont des Arts Bridge in Paris with all of his locks. Or the Bridge of Sorrows in Venice. Really any of the bridges in Venice; vain chooches the lot of them. I don’t know if they can help it, I’ve never been featured in a travelogue, or an instagram post, let alone daily instragram posts. Maybe that’s just what fame does to you.
But I digress.
Most of us are never gonna make it in this world. Seriously. At best, it’s 7th street bridge this, and the I-80 interchange that. I’m not in touch with many bridges overseas, but around here, it’s steel girders and asphalt for days. Maybe a truss if your architect liked you or the span was long. Nothing to differentiate you until your society of civil engineering D rating becomes an F during a tornado or earthquake.
It’s sad that the first time we really hear about a bridge is at their funeral. They were usually forgotten and neglected for years, and when they needed to give it their all, they couldn’t.
I’m sorry, this is a little close to home, can you give me a moment?
Ok. So then we get to the self-made bridges, just basic steel girders, but they put themselves out there.
First, there’s 11-foot-8, “The Can Opener.” (Not to be confused with the Louisville Can Opener.) She’s done well by herself. Put up a webcam to support her webpage and YouTube channel, regularly posted engaging content of her smashing the tops off trucks. Hell, the community started to pitch in, adding lights and a truck barrier to protect her while still giving us the glory of the crash. At her heyday, she had a crash a month.
Perhaps she did a little too well, since even with the limitations of maintaining the rail grade, they rebuilt her with an extra eight inches of clearance. She still gets the occasional truck, but her fame is fading.
Next, there’s the “Notorious” Montague Street bridge with an even lower clearance, three meters or about 10 feet. He’s a viscous span, built at the start of World War I to carry rail, and between him and the war there’s been over twenty million deaths.
They’ve added warning gantries and twenty-six signs to try to de-fang him, but he’s not going anywhere. It’s been a century since the road under him was raised - less than a decade after he was built! - and the minister of railways remains unwilling to regrade the track for more clearance, so there he sits.
Notorious Montague is maintains a website, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as appearing regularly on the evening news. He’s a steady local presence with a growing international following.
There are a few others that have made it like this: “The Fools Bridge” in St. Petersburg and the Bayswater Bridge in Perth come to mind. But you’ve got to have that perfect mixture of clearance, traffic, and prohibitive cost to rebuild to make it to fame.
And fame can be short lived. We all remember the rail bridge outside of Memphis, Tennessee that took the top off of a Ford auto train causing over two million dollars in damage, but could you tell me her name? No. You can’t even identify the rail yard she’s in.
So yeah, it makes sense that the Grand Junction, Frances Appleton, Longfellow, Harvard, Boston University, Boston University Marsh Chapel, Arthur Fiedler, Sieber Way, the Kenmore Square Exit Overpass, along with Blossom, Fairfield and Dartmouth Street have teamed up as “Storrow Drive.” Same reason we best know Melanie Brown as Scary Spice. And like the Spice Girls, these bridges each have their own niche within Storrow Drive.
Fanny’s the newest and prettiest, paired with stately old Longfellow (who’s arches have taken more than their fare share of hits).
Architecturally, the Boston University bridge stands out, but hiding under it is the Grand Junction - a rail bridge crossing the Charles River with some seriously low clearance. It’s one of very few places you can be in a car, over a train, over a boat, and under a plane.
Then there’s the tanks. Sieber Way only has eleven feet of clearance and is nice and narrow for that girder depth, and the Kenmore Overpass definitely punches above his weight due to the asymmetrical heights on each side of the road. Mass Ave is so low her girders are an easy target for graffiti, but those same girders will take the roof-mounted refrigeration unit off any truck that dares to pass.
And then there’s the rest. Nothing special about Arthur Fiedler except he’s managed to weasel his way into the group. Why him and not me?
I mean, once bridges were a big deal. People thought architects made pacts with the devil to get them to stand. Today? Throw up another concrete embankment and run some steel girders across it. Well, at least that’s show it went when I was built. Everyone seems to be made of precast concrete now; they say it’s more durable.
Still, I want my 15 minutes of fame. I opened as part of the highway expansion and there was not one clip, not one paragraph in any paper devoted to me. I don’t want to hurt anyone, but when I go, I hope it’s not a controlled demolition. I’d like collapse onto a semi trailer of ketchup or something and make the evening news. Just once. Maybe it could be filmed by a dash cam and go viral. That’d be nice.