Author Archives: Carolyn Ristau

Cleveland’s Bridges

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I was surprised how many bridges there are in Cleveland, as I’ve always considered it a flat city.  There are several bridges across the Cuyahoga River which flows through the city, but there are also many bridges elsewhere in the city.  These other bridges cross over railroad tracks or the highways or are railroads and highways crossing over regular roads.  This realization (that even flat cities have can have lots of bridges) is causing me to reconsider what bridges are significant.  For instance in the claim that Pittsburgh has more bridges than Venice, if Pittsburgh has more bridges because highway overpass bridges are included in the count then is that kind of cheating as there was no geological reason for those bridges?  In other words, when cities compete for who has the most bridges, it seems like it would only be fair to count the ones that exist because of geological formations.  On the other hand, this almost sounds like I am calling some bridges more natural than others, but as they are all man-made how can any be natural?  Anyway, this is something to ponder.

In the meantime, I’ll return to Cleveland’s Bridges.  I did not cross over any of the river bridges while I was visiting recently.  Instead, I went under them on the Goodtime III boat tour of the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie.  As seen on the map above, the boat entered the river in the upper left-hand corner, traveled downriver for over three miles (though as the bird flies it was only about 1.75 miles), and turned around in the last “corner” of the river seen in the lower right-hand corner.  In the process, we passed under 13 bridges, while a 14th bridge swung out of our way.

While I call Cleveland a flat city, there are at least two significant changes in elevation.  One is located out by University Circle and though it continues farther out, I am most familiar with it because it separates the frats and some dorms of Case Western Reserve University’s southern campus from the rest of the campus.  This is a moraine formed by glaciers during the last ice age (or so I’ve been told).  The second elevation change is next to downtown.  The Flats district along the river is significantly lower than the surrounding areas, including downtown and whatever the neighborhood on the western side of the river is.

      

All the bridges we traveled under on the Cuyahoga River were interesting and unique, at least compared to the bridges in Pittsburgh.  About half the bridges were railroad bridges.  The railroads tended to travel along the flats and so crossed the river with very low clearance.  To allow the passage of larger vessels, such as the one we were on, these bridges raised and lowered like elevators.  On the other hand, the bridges carrying roads were very tall as they traveled at the height of downtown and the western neighborhoods.  This also meant that most of them were very long as they not only crossed the river, but also crossed the flats which were sometimes very broad.

This bridge was the only one of its kind on the river.  Instead of raising and lowering like all the other low clearance bridges, this one rotates in either direction to swing out of the way of boats.

Here was a railroad bridge higher than the others.  Though it still had the mechanisms for rising up, if it needed to, it appeared that our boat was short enough to pass under without this.  A car bridge passes over this bridge before passing over the river as well, however this one will be demolished in the near future, after the one under construction is finished.

These bridges were interesting as they were two railroad bridges right next to each other, which seemed rather odd.  My theories for this are that either the tracks belong to different railroad companies or one was built first and then the railroad grew, expanding to two tracks, and instead of replacing the bridge with one for two tracks just built a second one right next to the first.  Either way, it’s a sight you don’t see every day.

Though Pittsburgh’s Fort Duquesne Bridge is nicknamed “The Bridge to Nowhere” (see June 19th post), this Cleveland bridge deserves the title more as the road or railroad it used to connect across the river no longer exists.  I wonder why they keep the bridge in place, when its purpose is gone.  It seems to me that this could easily become a hazard as the bridge weathers and there is no reason to maintain it.  In the meantime, before it comes crashing down, it does make an entertaining sight.

     

 

And of course, since I was passing underneath the bridges, I had to take a shot at the undersides!

Maps are Awesome!

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While talking with someone recently, we discovered we shared a seemingly rare love of maps.  Maps are truly awesome and useful tools and not just for figuring out how to get from one place to another.  Maps provide insight into what a place looks like, giving clues about the layout and geography of a place you’ve never been.  Street names and other labels can hint at the history of the place.  Historical maps show what a place looked like in times past.

I have used maps several times to help me with writing my blog and there are many more times when I should have gone to a map first. As I mentioned in the first Heth’s Run Bridge post, the G.M. Hopkins maps on Historic Pittsburgh are probably my favorite resource for Pittsburgh.  Heth’s Run Bridge presented many puzzles that the maps helped me understand.  I realized yesterday that I probably should have gone to these maps first when wanting to figure out which bridge remnant I saw from the Fort Duquesne Bridge (see June 19’s post).  While writing that post, I did a search on the internet, but came up with nothing.  The G.M. Hopkins maps came to the rescue, although there are two possibilities for which bridge the remnant belonged to.  The first possibility I found on the 1900 map.  This one was called the Union Bridge.  By 1929, the Union Bridge was gone and another bridge connected the Point to the North Side.  This one was called Manchester Bridge.  This bridge was demolished in 1970, by which time the Fort Duquesne Bridge was built (see June 19th post).  I made a few other discoveries about Pittsburgh while looking at the 1929 map.  First, Penn and Liberty avenues used to come straight through to Water Road which ran along the northern shore of the Monongahela River.  Today these avenues stop much further inland.  The second major discovery was that Point Park already existed in 1929.  It was significantly smaller than it is today, but it is there.

Google Maps helped me with identify the buildings near Lambeth Bridge (see June 28th post) that I didn’t take the time to stop and investigate while I was walking the bridge.  Several of the buildings I was able to identify from labels that Google Maps conveniently placed on the map.  The Parliament View Apartments weren’t labeled, but using Google Maps’s other wonderful feature–Street View–I was able to find a sign on the building identifying it.

The image leading this post is of another highly convenient map.  On my recent trip to Cleveland, I arrived Downtown 2 hours before the person I was visiting finished work.  We arranged to meet at their place of work, but I was only familiar with two or three of the streets in downtown Cleveland, and the meeting place wasn’t on any of them.  I had just decided to use my skills of logic to find it (which would have been feasible in this case as one of the cross streets was a numbered street and the other was called Lakeside) when I came across this map on a street corner.  It turns out that these maps are posted regularly around downtown Cleveland, which I thought was very considerate of the city.  It made the city feel like it welcomed visitors with open arms, engaging them in being engaged in the city.  Even though I had a plan for finding where I was going without a map, I prefer being safe rather than sorry, so I took the easy way out and used the map to figure out where I was supposed to end up.  I also used it to plot out how I could spend the time I had until my friend got out of work to cross at least one of Cleveland’s bridges over the river Cuyahoga.  I ended up getting distracted from this goal, but that is a story for another day….(see July 9 post)….

OH, Cleveland!

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I spent my freshman year of college in Cleveland, OH.  University Circle, the neighborhood my campus was in, was beautiful and pleasant, but the rest of the city stuck in my mind as rather ugly and dull.  In fact, my friends and I referred to it as “the city that always sleeps.”  Outside of campus there didn’t seem to be anything to do, particularly after 7 p.m.

I often compare Cleveland and Pittsburgh in my mind and for years, Cleveland came up the less favorable of the two.  This is in part due to the unfavorable impression I developed of downtown Cleveland while in school there and in part due to the vast fields of vacant lots that separate downtown from University Circle.  In the last couple years, I made several quick trips to Cleveland.  Every time I come home more amazed by the city.

First, I started noticing the street art and fancy trash cans.  The next trip, I was awed by Cleveland’s BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) system.  Pittsburgh’s bus system is loosing routes and cutting back on service hours and here Cleveland was able to institute a BRT with fancy new buses, new bus shelters at every stop along the BRT route that include fare boxes and electric signs that tell you how many minutes until the next bus arrives, and dedicated lanes and traffic lights for the BRT.  Last weekend when I visited was the first time I’ve spent any significant amount of time walking downtown and I was impressed with what I saw.

There is vacant property all over the city.  Cleveland’s population decline over the last 60 years was much more severe than Pittsburgh’s.  It went from a peak of around 900,000 to just under 400,000 in 2010, whereas Pittsburgh only got up to 600,000 and fell to 300,000.  Yet, downtown, the city’s managed to still look beautiful despite the vacant buildings with greenery such as the garden in the road divider above.

I saw another method for reducing the blightedness of vacant properties in another part of the city 8 miles from downtown.  Here they placed art installations in vacant lots that were for sale.

Things definitely seem to be looking up for Cleveland.  I read recently that the County Executive for Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) met with the one for Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) to pick up some tips on how to help turn a struggling rust belt region around.  However, I think that Pittsburgh/Allegheny County could pick up some tips from Cleveland/Cuyahoga County.

Westminster Bridge

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I mentioned in my post on Battersea Bridge that the traffic on the bridge was low, but that this was probably in part due to the fact that I crossed it on Sunday afternoon.  I was so excited about walking all the bridges in London that I walked half of them first thing that Sunday afternoon when I arrived.  The traffic condition on most of the bridges was similar to the Battersea Bridge–not much.  I did pass several other pedestrians as I walked along the Thames River Path to get between the bridges, but the volume of the pedestrian traffic changed significantly when I reached Westminster Bridge.  Crowds of people were crossing the Westminster Bridge, enough that an ice cream truck parked at one end to attract customers from the passersby.

      

Going back to the mysterious tower under construction next to the St Georges Wharf Apartments (see Lambeth Bridge post and Battersea Bridge post), my favorite view of these buildings was from the Westminster Bridge.  The way they appear in a cluster with other buildings along the river soothes my sense of harmony, as the tower doesn’t stick out so abruptly in this view.  This is one of my favorite things about walking bridges–seeing how the appearance of a particular location can change drastically when viewed from different locations.  The Thames River is particularly good for this as it twists and turns quite a bit as it passes through London.  This causes the incomplete tower to look like it is right next to the other tall building, when in reality they are separated by a fair distance and are on opposite sides of the river (again refer to the Lambeth Bridge post for a different view of these buildings).

Lambeth Bridge

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Lambeth Bridge toned down the color schemes a bit by using only two main colors, compared to the three or more colors found on the Vauxhall and Albert bridges (see June 20 and June 16 posts).  Also, the character of the area surrounding Lambeth Bridge changed from that surrounding the bridges I crossed previously.  There was much more of the older, classic London around Lambeth Bridge.  The southern shore combines the old and new.  On the left, looking from the bridge is the historic Lambeth Palace, the site of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s London residence since the 13th century.  (This accounts for the building’s religious appearance.  I had assumed when seeing it in person that it was some kind of church, so when I looked it up from the comfort of home and saw it was a palace I was initially disappointed at my error.)  To the right across the street from the Palace, is a sleek, modern, glass building housing the Parliament View Apartments.  In retrospect, I regret not taking a picture that includes both the Palace and the apartments in one frame.

     

The views up- and down-river from the bridge correspond to the sites at the southern end of the bridge.  Downriver, the side corresponding to the old Lambeth Palace, the view is dominated by old London architecture particularly the Houses of Parliament.  At the same time the upriver view is dominated by newer architecture, like the Parliament View Apartments upriver from Lambeth Palace.

     

I would like to add a correction to my post on the Battersea Bridge where I identified the tower under construction, also visible in the Lambeth Bridge upriver photo above, as the Shard.  In the Battersea Bridge post, I identified the building as the Shard because it was the only tower under construction in London on which I could find any information on.  Also, one of the photos labeled as the Shard looked similar to this building.  However the Shard is closer to central London.  Today I learned that the complex next to the tower is the St Georges Wharf Apartments, which are rented by the night.  Based on the style of architecture of these buildings and the tower and their proximity to each other, I have a suspicion that they are related.  It would probably be a good thing if the tower was an expansion of the apartments because the current apartments are completely booked.  Out of curiosity, I searched multiple dates between now and June 2013; none of them had any availability.

Istanbul Bridges

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I decided it was time to add some variety to my bridges post.  Last year I spent two weeks in Istanbul.  While I was not as absorbed in my bridges quest at that time, I found that thinking about the bridges in Pittsburgh and London caused me to reflect on the bridges in Istanbul.  Considering how much water there is in Istanbul, there are very few bridges.  I can only recall seeing three: the Galata Bridge, Ataturk Bridge, and the Bosphorus Bridge.  (Apparently my memory is a little rusty as I just looked up a map of Istanbul which shows there were four bridges that I would have seen, this obviously reflects the fact that I was not in my bridges phase at that time.)  Of these four bridges, I only crossed the Galata Bridge, but I walked under the Bosphorus Bridge and took some pictures of it.

The Galata and Bosphorus bridges are very different in age and use.  There has been a Galata Bridge since the middle of the 19th century and a bridge over the Golden Horn (the body of water the Galata Bridge spans) since at least the 6th century.  The Galata Bridge has many uses.  There are wide sidewalks that accommodate pedestrians, three lanes in each direction for cars, and tracks down the middle of the bridge for the trams.  While I worked very hard not to get any of them in the picture above, the bridge is usually lined with fisherman and street vendors sell freshly caught and cooked fish.  Below the street deck are numerous restaurants.  One day, we had fish sandwiches for lunch at one of these, which were surprisingly good (I’m not much of a fish fan).  The line of one of the fisherman on the street deck above can be seen in my picture from the restaurant.  The Galata Bridge not only provides access between two points, but also provides people access to their livelihoods and to decent meals.  This shows that bridges do not have to be just about funneling traffic from one place to another; they can be a lively and interactive space in the city.

     

On the other hand, the Bosphorus Bridge, built in the 1970s as the first bridge to span the Bosphorus strait, is purely a funnel (as far as I observed).  It looks like it could be in New York or almost any other US city.  The purpose of the Bosphorus Bridge is like that of most of Pittsburgh’s river bridges–to provide vehicular access across a body of water.

      

Veterans Bridge

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The Veterans Bridge is one of the bridges I will not be walking in Pittsburgh because it doesn’t have pedestrian access.  It carries another one of the freeways over the Allegheny River.  As discussed in the Fort Duquesne Bridge post, freeways and pedestrians usually don’t mix.

The reason that I am including a post on this bridge, as my focus is on the bridges that I walk, is that it adds to the discussion of how many bridges are there in Pittsburgh.  As the Veterans Bridge, I consider it a single bridge entity.  However, the image above shows that there are three separate entities that make up the bridge, at least as it crosses over the parking lots in The Strip (I believe at least two of these merge before the bridge crosses the river).  So the question is, do these three elevated roadways get counted as three separate bridges in addition to the bridge over the river?  If that is the case, then it is easy to see how Pittsburgh can outrank Venice in the number of bridges each city has.  Though I have yet to go to Venice, I image its bridges are more like London’s bridges where there is only one roadway and few or no elevated ramps/roadways to approach the bridge.

Three Sisters: 7th Street Bridge

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The final of the Three Sisters is the 7th Street Bridge (see my earlier posts on the 6th Street and 9th Street Bridges).  This one is named after Andy Warhol, which makes sense as the Andy Warhol Museum is located about two blocks from the northern end of the bridge.  Another attraction on the northern end is the “new” Alcoa building.  Alcoa, an aluminum company, moved from their skyscraper downtown to this blue glass, wavy building in 1998 (the building on the right in the picture above).  The former Alcoa Building downtown (which people still call the Alcoa Building) is unusual with its aluminum walls and pod-like windows.  It was turned over to a consortium of non-profit groups, but has lately been plagued with high vacancy rates.  A 2012 Post-Gazette newspaper article1 announced a plan to convert the upper portion to apartments and retain the lower portion for the existing tenants.  I haven’t been inside the old building, but the new one is quite swanky.2  It reminds me a bit of a building used in the first Jason Bourne film for the headquarters of a firm that sells giant yachts to billionaires.

The 7th Street Bridge was the first of the Three Sisters to be built in 1926.  The 6th Street Bridge, aka Roberto Clemente Bridge, was built downriver (see June 14th post) and the 9th Street  Bridge, aka Rachel Carson Bridge, was built upriver (see June 21st post) a few years later.  Its location in-between the other two bridges means that the views from it are not much different.  The view upstream is almost identical to that from the 9th Street Bridge, except that the 9th Street Bridge is added to the mass of bridges, making the view more cluttered.  Downstream, there is still a nice view of Mt. Washington and a good view of Kayak Pittsburgh under the 6th Street Bridge.

     

  1. Checking the link in 2026, I could not find a working link to the Post-Gazette’s article I cited. But PMC Property Group still maintains their 2012 page announcing their plans for the building, which have since been executed: https://www.pmcpropertygroup.com/corporate/news/pmc-property-group-expands-reach-pittsburgh-market ↩︎
  2. By 2026, I have also been inside the old building. “Swanky” is probably an appropriate word for it, too, with its pink marble lobby. ↩︎

Three Sisters: 9th Street Bridge

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I decided to address each of the Three Sisters separately after all and for some reason to do it out of order (which is quite unusual for me as I am generally very methodical).  The 9th Street Bridge is also called the Rachel Carson Bridge.  Rachel Carson was an environmentalist who grew up near Pittsburgh and attended college at the forerunner of Chatham University (one of Pittsburgh’s many universities).  The bridge was named in her honor on Earth Day in 2006.  Unlike the other Three Sisters Bridges, there is no specific reason why this bridge should have been named for Rachel Carson.  The 6th Street Bridge (see June 14th post) renamed for Roberto Clemente, a former Pirates player, connects to PNC Park, the current home of the Pittsburgh Pirates, while the 7th Street Bridge renamed for Andy Warhol connects to the Andy Warhol Museum (see June 22 post).  As far as I am aware, there is no similar connection between the location of the 9th Street Bridge and its namesake.

As far as my observations go, this bridge is the least used of the Three Sisters.  The south end of the bridge is near CAPA High School (for performing arts) and the Convention Center, but the north end does not connect to any buildings or sights that seem like they attract much traffic, while the north end of the other two connect to a museum and a ballpark.  In addition to the surroundings, the condition of the bridge suggested that it is not as well cared for (perhaps because there is less traffic) than the others.  There are two stone pillars at each end of each of the three bridges.  One of these on the Rachel Carson Bridge was almost completely covered in vines and weeds.  The side facing into the bridge holds the plaque identifying the bridge and was the only side not covered in growth.  On second thought, perhaps this is not due to a lack of maintenance but rather in recognition of the fact that Rachel Carson was an environmentalist.

The views up and downriver from the Rachel Carson Bridge encompass mostly the other bridges around it.  Upriver are a railroad bridge, the Veteran’s Bridge (see June 24 post), and the 16th Street Bridge (see July 13 and July 14 posts).  However, rising above these bridges is the Children’s Hospital in Lawrenceville, another iconic Pittsburgh building visible from multiple points around the city and displaying a color scheme as intriguing as any of the London bridges.

Vauxhall Bridge

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I must say that London has the most interesting and varied color schemes for its bridges of any city I have yet visited.  In Pittsburgh, for instance, the bridges that have color use only one (and that tends to be yellow).  All the examples I can think of for bridges in other US cities follow a similar color design as Pittsburgh, though not in yellow.  On the other hand, London’s Vauxhall Bridge presents yet another tri-color design scheme different from the three bridges I’ve already posted about and from the nine more to come.

Upriver from the bridge, the smoke stacks of the Battersea Power Station (see June 18 post) are still in view.  In the other direction, classic, old London architecture appears, after the views from the bridges upriver were dominated by modern architecture (when I say modern architecture I include anything from the Modern Movement beginning roughly in the 1920s through contemporary architecture).

       

More interesting than the color scheme of this bridge was the sculpture.  Vauxhall Bridge has five arches; there are four statues on each side of the bridge, one in-between each arch.  Each statue obviously represented what I guessed to be some form of art or industry.  The one holding the model of St. Paul’s Cathedral and the one with the scythe were easy to identify as Architecture and Agriculture respectively.  I could not immediately determine the symbolism of several of the others including the one holding the urn.  Fortunately, we have the internet, which has given me the official representation for each statue.  In order they are: Government, Education, Fine Art, Science/Astronomy, Agriculture, Architecture, Engineering, and Pottery.

               

               

For more information about Vauxhall Bridge including pictures and quotes about the previous bridge on this site, I found this website interesting.