Tag Archives: London

Blackfriars Bridge

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One thing that stuck out to me while in London was the amount of construction going on.  It seemed like everywhere I went in the city there were cranes and/or something was being built, and I didn’t go anywhere near any of the sites for the Olympics.  While on the bridges, cranes could often be seen at a distance, but the Blackfriars Bridge seemed to be in the heart of a construction area.

Cranes can be seen on the southern shore in the first image above.  The downriver view from the bridge was completely blocked and will remain blocked by “London’s first station to span the Thames.”  At first I find this very annoying, as I think there would be a good view of the city looking downstream from Blackfriars Bridge.  However, building a station over the Thames is actually an interesting idea.  In a city as dense as London there isn’t much room for expansion.  There doesn’t appear to be anywhere else this close to the heart of the city to build a new large station.  The rail website explains that this station, which is being built on top of a Victorian railway bridge, will allow for longer commuter trains and improve access to the Tate Modern and the Globe Theater.  Another piece of note about the bridge is that it is being fully equipped with solar panels and will be the longest solar bridge in the world.  Apparently, the competition for the title “World’s Longest Solar Bridge” is not particularly tough at the moment as there is only one other known solar bridge in the world which is the pedestrian Kurilpa Bridge in Australia.

My favorite part about this revamped railway bridge is that it challenges the function of a bridge.  Today, most bridges function simply as a way to get from point A to point B.  One exception to this is the Galata Bridge in Istanbul (see June 25 post).  I remember seeing and using a bridge in Bath, England, when I was a kid that had shops on both sides so that you couldn’t even tell you were on a bridge while crossing it.  Bridges like this seem to have been popular in medieval Europe.  In a class I took on the history of cities, we looked at medieval Paris which had multiple bridges with buildings lining both sides.  Perhaps with the invention of transportation technologies that permit sprawling cities, there is no reason to use bridges as anything more than a connector.

I suppose if there were more bridges with mixed functions like carrying shops as well as roads, then there would be less great views, still it’s an interesting concept.  Bridges often end up adding to the dead space of a city, but this might be more because of what they connect than because of their function to move people along.

Waterloo Bridge: The Finest Non-inspiration

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To pick up where I left off with the London bridges I walked earlier this year, the next bridge is Waterloo Bridge.  (The last one I discussed was Jubilee Bridge on July 10.)  The Waterloo Bridge was the most boring bridge in London, though I didn’t realize it at the time.  When I got home however, I realized I only took two pictures from it and hadn’t taken any of the bridge itself.  The picture above was one I took from the Jubilee Bridge to show the downriver view from the bridge, which happens to include the Waterloo Bridge.

I was expecting that the London Bridge would be boring.  Sometime before my trip, I mistakenly identified the Tower Bridge as the London Bridge.  The discussion that ensued, in which I was corrected, led me to believe that the London Bridge was plain and uninteresting and as such, I was not the first to mistake the Tower Bridge for it.  While the London Bridge itself was boring and like the Waterloo Bridge lacked the colors and sculpture found on the other bridges (see the examples of the Albert Bridge and Vauxhall Bridge), it there were many interesting things to see from the London Bridge.  While crossing the Waterloo Bridge, I was only inspired to take shots of the downriver and upriver views.

The most interesting thing to note about these views, is in comparing the downriver view from the Jubilee Bridge with the downriver view from the Waterloo Bridge (pictured above) it appears that the new buildings are pushing the classical buildings such as St. Paul’s out of the frame.

When I come across a situation like this, where there isn’t much to say from my experience, I turn to the internet to give me something to fill out with.  I found two intriguing bits in my Google search.  First is that while I found the views from Waterloo Bridge uninspiring, Wikipedia suggests that the views of the city from this bridge “are widely held to be the finest from any spot at the ground level.”  The second is that Hollywood has made two films called “Waterloo Bridge” in 1931 and 1940 in which the main characters meet on the Waterloo Bridge.  The interesting part is that the movie Production Codes changed in between which resulted in two fairly different films–the first about a scarlet woman accidentally killed, the second about a proper woman who commits suicide to save the man she loves from scandal.

What is a Bridge? Pittsburgh Edition I

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When I reached the next pedestrian accessible bridge to get off of Herr’s Island/Washington’s Landing (after having got on it by the converted railroad bridge), the question of what is a bridge stared me in the face.  I’ve skirted that question since starting this blog, sometimes alluding to it in passing, but never really dealing with it head on.  It came up first with Heth’s Run Bridge.  While in the posts on this bridge (see Part I and Part II) I mention that the deep ravine that the bridge once spanned has been filled in, I don’t discuss what this means for the structure’s status as a bridge.  The question there is: Is a bridge still a bridge if what it bridged has been filled in and the bridge isn’t actually bridging anything anymore?

Then, when I wrote about the Bridge Under a Bridge, I couldn’t help wondering if it was cheating to include this bridge as it was purely an aesthetic bridge built so that a man-made pond could go underneath.  A different aesthetic choice could have led instead to a path bordered by two man-made ponds.  Yet I still refused to address the question of what is a bridge?

At this point, I feel it is necessary to face the question, this point being where the 30th Street Bridge connects to the River Avenue ramp which connects to the 31st Street Bridge.  From the view pictured above of the 30th Street Bridge, it looks like a bridge.  However, from where I got on it (the lower end on the left side in the image above) it looked to me like a ramp taking traffic from a low point to merge onto another road at a higher elevation.  Besides, it connects to the River Avenue ramp and in the junction of these two structures (pictured below), it felt like one continuous ramp system.  Yet, a portion of this system is called a bridge.    So I ask myself, “what is a bridge?”

First, I thought, “a bridge is a structure that connects two points which would otherwise not be accessible to each other.”  Then I realized this definition includes ramps. In my current example, there is no other way that River Avenue, which for most of its course runs at the same level as the bike path in the picture above, would be able to access the 31st Street Bridge without a ramp.  Therefore, according to my definition above the ramp is a bridge.

Another thought I had was “a bridge is a structure that spans a geological obstacle.”  Well then, that means that the bridges that only exist to cross over a road or railroad aren’t really bridges.  I discuss these types of bridges some in my post on Cleveland Bridges.  In that post, I don’t question whether or not they are bridges, but whether they are significant enough to be counted in comparing the number of bridges cities have.  Though I didn’t state it, I also wondered if they were significant enough for me to include these types of bridges in my bridge walking.  Regardless of their significance, I consider them bridges.

Merriam-Webster defines a bridge as “a structure carrying a pathway or roadway over a depression or obstacle.”  This definition seems pretty good as it excludes ramps but includes the bridges over man-made obstacles.  I’d say this definition also would include the Bridge Under a Bridge.  However, it doesn’t address the situation of Heth’s Run Bridge prior to its renovation.  What if the structure “carrying a pathway or roadway” at one time crossed over “a depression or obstacle,” but does so no longer though the structure is still there?  Is it still a bridge?

There is one other dilemma suggested by the 30th Street Bridge/River Avenue Ramp/31st Street Bridge structures, the Fort Duquesne Bridge, the Veterans Bridge, and London’s Jubilee Bridge.  This dilemma is perhaps best expressed by “what makes one bridge?”

In the Veterans Bridge example, three separate structures cross over the obstacle of the lower elevation of the parking lots in the Strip before joining to become one structure across the obstacle of the Allegheny River.  So, is this one bridge or three?

When I walked the Fort Duquesne Bridge, I was walking a pedestrian bridge built approximately 40 years after the Fort Duquesne Bridge.  The pedestrian bridge is attached to the Fort Duquesne Bridge over the Allegheny River, but on either end it is separate with its own supports.  Is this one bridge or two?

London’s Jubilee Bridge has two separate pathways, but one name and dedication date.  They are separated by a bridge for the underground, which, as far as I can tell, they are attached to for structural support.  So is this one, two or three bridges?

The 30th Street Bridge/River Avenue Ramp/31st Street Bridge structures appear to me to be one conglomeration, similar to the three structures that merge in the Veterans Bridge.  Yet while the elements in the Veterans Bridge appear to be considered one structure, the 30th Street Bridge is considered a separate structure from the 31st Street Bridge, at least in so far as it has its own name and its own page on PGHbridges.com.  What makes the 30th Street and 31st Street bridges different from the other examples I’ve listed above?

For a continuation of this discussion see What is a Bridge? Pittsburgh Edition II

Additional Posts in Series:

Jubilee Bridge

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The Jubilee Bridge is quite unique, at least compared to the other bridges in London.  First, it is the newest bridge I crossed–Her Royal Highness Princess Alexandra dedicated the bridge on July 2, 2003.  Second, it is one of only two pedestrian bridges.  Third, it crosses the Thames twice.

Built on either side of one of the underground bridges which connects to the Embankment station, this bridge is really two bridges.  Particularly for my project, it was very thoughtful of the builders to put a bridge on either side of the underground one so that pedestrians can choose which view of the river they get.

Downriver shows a great view of the changing skyline of London Town.  St. Paul’s Cathedral still dominates its part of the skyline, but more towers are popping up around it.  It almost seems like there are more cranes than buildings in this view of London.

The upriver span of the bridge provides an excellent view of the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament.  And speaking of Parliament, I recently saw that Big Ben has been renamed Elizabeth Tower (see article in the BBC news).  While I agree that it is a great accomplishment for Queen Elizabeth to have reached her 60th year on the throne, I am quite dismayed by the decision to rename Big Ben.  Big Ben is such an iconic and catchy name.  I don’t see how Elizabeth Tower could possibly catch on.  It is one thing to rename the King’s Tower as Victoria Tower, but quite another to rename Big Ben.  It seems like there surely must be something else that Parliament could rename to honor the Queen.

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)….

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: 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.