What Kind of Burnside Bridge Do You Want For The Future?

4161While the process grinds forward on the redux of Interstate Bridge 2.0, the process is rolling along quite smoothly on the planning to replace the Burnside Bridge.

The current bridge is gorgeous, laden with history, a classic of design, a linchpin of Portland's geography, and will collapse like a Republican excuse for not doing the right thing when Cascadia Next happens. It's apparently advantageously situate for keeping the city together in the wake of that anticipated cataclysm, so the goal is to have a Burnside Bridge that will not shake down when that 'quake finally happens.

In the apres-quake times, the most important thing for getting Portland back on its bearings ... however long that will take ... will be eastside-westside connectivity and access.

The opporunity is being taken to make the new-Burnside-Bridge-to-be another example of statement architecture that we Portlanders are so very fond of. There are two options to consider; a tied-arch bridge, similar to the Fremont Bridge, and an cable-stayed bridge, using the technique that was built into the Tilikum Crossing. 

These two styles are asymmetrical; the signature architectural part, the arch in the first case and the cable-stay tower support in the second, will be over the Interstate 5-east end of the bridge, leaving a span over the middle of the channel for a the necessary drawspan for river traffic and for making Portland tourist wonder why they had to stop on the bridge in the middle of the day.

There are also variations on each style. This picture, sharked from the Earthquake Ready Burnside site, shows the beauty profile of the tied arch look from a point in Tom McCall Waterfront Park on the west bank:

Source: https://burnsidebridge.participate.online/tied-arch.html

Driving over it will look like this ... which reminds me of a crossing of the Fremont, which has always been a love of ours:

Source: https://burnsidebridge.participate.online/tied-arch.html

The other option, the cable-stayed version, looks this way:

Source: https://burnsidebridge.participate.online/cable-stay.html

This version will have taller towers than the arch-style, but the visual presence isn't there for me. However, the asymmetry of the cable stays does have a element of dynamic style in it.

There is a survey on line that anyone can submit their opinions and personal preferences into, it's found at https://burnsidebridge.participate.online/survey.html. The homepage of the informational website is https://burnsidebridge.participate.online/, of course. 

In the near future, this bridge will close for a remarkably-long five year span for this replacement. I don't even remember the Hawthorne Bridge being closed for that long back in the 90s when they updated the eastside approaches.This will be something to contend with for a lot of us on all levels. I'll be recording everything I can about it and posting it here as I go.

We were there for the opening of the 21st Century Sellwood Bridge, and I'll put my anchor down here; I'm looking forward for us to be there for the opening of the 21st Century Burnside Bridge as well. In the meantime I'm going to be finding us taking many more pictures of the current span; it's a charming architectural gem, and that passing will be notable. 

Looking East on East Burnside

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Nothing too profound or prolix about this shot, though I do enjoy the perspective feel that the diminishing traffic signal gantries and overhead street blades provide.

You've got Grand, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th crossing East Burnside here, then that small hill to a slightly higher flat, that's at 12th.

POV is east from where Burnside intersects MLK Jr Blvd (east end of the Burnside Bridge).

A View Through The Bridges

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Another view upriver from my Steel Bridge viewpoint. 

I didn't get precisely the view I was hoping to - I don't know if such a thing is achievable - but I did get zooms that, if not calendar for frame-worthy, certainly have interest, as far as I'm concerned.

The view is, again, looking south, or upriver. What's in full view is the bascule leaves of the Burnside Bridge's lift span, and what is in view through there are truss approaches to the Morrison, with the glimpse of the Hawthorne through that. The towers in the distaance are the condo silos of the South Watherfront.

The thing I really want to draw attention to are the two 'conning towers' on either side of the Burnside's draw span. They are lovely and quaintly decorated and look very pretty up close. Anyone gets down there, please give them a lingering look. They are visually very delightful.

The Blue Heart Of Portland

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Looking south from the vicinity of the Steel Bridge is looking up-river along the Willamette, in the reach that extends through Portland's veriest city center. There are many bridges and so very many new buildings, most of which you see in this shot did not exist fifteen years ago (again, same planet, different world ... Saint Ursula was prescient in a way).

On the right, downtown; on the left, the burgeoning central east side. Going from foreground to background we see, in whole, the Burnside Bridge, and in parts: the Morrison Bridge, the Hawthorne Bridge, the Marquam Bridge arching above them all, and if you look sharp, one of the towers of the Tilikum Crossing. 

And this is Portland's Blue Heart. 

Four Portland Bridges In One (Picture): 2018 Throwback

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Other cities have more bridges, other cities have fewer but more spectacular bridges, but Portland, with a mere seven traffic crossings over its modest yet muscular dividing river has a rep as Bridgetown which extends well beyond its limit.

Maybe because, in the gestalt way, Portland's bridges draw the line between number, function, design, and majesty to accidentally arrive in a certain picturesque sweet spot. The modern lines of the Morrison Bridge are sublime; the antiqueness of the Burnside, the rusticness of the Steel, are, to me, more memorable than the majesty of the suspension spans linking New York boroughs. Even the Saint Johns, despite its quaintness, emanates a combination of poise and elegance that the Golden Gate Bridge can't match. 

But that's me; I, even in the evolved Portland of today, am ever the PDX-chauvinist. Home-town pride and all that.

There's another more practical niftiness about the bend of the Willamette through the dead center of the Rose City; it affords unique angles that allow me to combine more than one bridge most attractively into one shot. For instance, if you situate yourself in the proper place, about 2/3rds of the way east over the Burnside from downtown, you get this:

Four bridges in this shot: in the distance, the arch of the Fremont; next nearer, the red trusses of the Broadway; one more in, the prehistoric Steel, and the balustrade of the one I'm standing on here, the Burnside. Through the gaps in that balustrade you see a car cruising along a ramp from the Banfield Freeway westbound to I-5 along the river southbound; if you look carefully between the supports of the Steel you see a bulk ship standing by to either unload or go; and on the right peeks out the Louis-Dreyfus grain dock elevators.

There are probably other river scenes in other river cities where you can combine nearby elements for an interesting view, but my heart tells me they can't really compete with this even before I've looked at them. 

Interestingly, despite the preponderance of 2010-2013 throwbacks from the now-decommissioned Kodak EasyShare C813, this was actually taken in 2018 according to the EXIF data, so it isn't a throwback ... more of a gentle shoveback.

Plague Year Diary: Crossing The Burnside Bridge

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A couple of shots now of the bridge that connects the east and west sides of Portland at its heart, the Burnside Bridge.

Clear sailing on a following breeze. Traffic is not an issue. This was in the middle of Tuesday afternoon this week.

After cresting the bridge and starting the downhill slope into downtown, one can look ahead and see the almost-empty West Burnside Street, ahead, under the trees. It is usually a throng of traffic not to be trifled with.

It is not so, today.

They Call It The Fair-Haired Dumbell. No, Really.

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Portland is in the midst of a building-boom, of course, economics being what it is here in terminal-stage capitalism, of properly Erisian proportion. It's only natural that someone or something in the collective psyche would snap.

Here's what happened with it did.

Back in the days of Mayor Sam Adams, someone got the brilliant idea to turn E Burnside and Couch from NE 14th to the Burnside Bridge into a one-way couplet; Burnside going east, Couch going west. Not only did it ruin a great visual approach to downtown on East Burnside, but it also improved property values (like any other corner of Portland really needed it; pretty soon, you'll be renting the air).

This caused a change in geography in what we sometimes still call the "Burnside Bridgehead", that area where the east end of the Burnside Bridge comes back to earth. The sole corner used to be Burnside and Martin Luther King Jr Blvd. Now, Couch was changed to go one-half block west, s-curve south, then join Burnside to channel the westbound flow onto the bridge. The architecture, such as it was, was swept aside. An open space was created, and that's the way it stood for more than a couple years.

Well, bring us up from 2014 to the present day. Ladies and gentlemen not of Portland, allow me to introduce you to what is actually called "The Fair-Haired Dumbbell"

Looking SE from NE Couch St and Couch Ct, a street belonging only to bicycles

When built, a local alt-weekly exulted Finally, architecture we can argue about. Across the river, on SW 5th, The Portland Building breathed an almost-audible sigh of relief knowing that there was finally a building in town that would attract more opprobrium.

Looking SW from the corner of MLK and Couch

The building looks as though what you'd get if you engaged Willy Wonka as an architect.  Your eyes do not deceive you; non of the sides are plumb. It's all angles. The windows are of various sizes and in seemingly random array.

It's apparently an attempt to redefine the concept of 'building' as 'a structure you walk into and do things in'.

The middle of the Dumbbell, showing the connecting walkways.

As can be seen in the above picture, strictly speaking, the Dumbbell isn't just one building, it's two smaller ones connected by a sort of stacked set of skybridges. Just as you figure you have it figured, you find you figured wrong.

Looking NW from the corner of East Burnside and MLK Jr. Blvd.

There's another thing that one might have surmised in looking at this building; it is stranded on a smaller-than modestly-sized Portland block, surrounded with some of the heaviest street traffic in Portland, with minimal parking. That street parking you see on MLK is all the parking there is next to the building proper. There is a parking garage in that Death-Star-looking edifice behind it and on the left, and while I didn't peep the prices, I understand easy financing is available for well-qualified parkers, if you follow me here.

Looking NE, from the Burnside Bridge

And what a paint-job there, hey? Positively painfully Portland psychidelic.

The Fair-Haired Dummbell is one of a kind; if Portlandia put a bird on this one, it'd have to be a cuckoo. But it casts a kind of a spell, you see; one begins to enjoy it despite every instinct in one that insists that this is quite possibly a crime against architecture suitable for prosecution at the International Court of Justice.

Now, I've loved buildings and I've hated them. I have alternatively loved and hated them. But never before have I simultaneously loved and hated a building. The Fair-Haired Dumbbell is both joyously antic and fun and also rage-inducing ... and I hold these emotions concurrently. 

That alt-weekly was right. This is architecture we can argue about.

I just don't know if they meant you can argue with yourself about it.

[Photos on Sunday] Parked In The Sunlight On The Burnside Bridge

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I may be a city mouse of long standing, but I started out as a country mouse. Silverton, to be precise. So maybe it stands to reason that I never become completely jaded of living in Portland, and have it best of both worlds, because even though I was born of a small Oregon town, I've lived in the big Oregon town more than half my life, so I am a city kid now, if only by osmosis.

Stadt luft macht frei. The air of the city leads to liberation.

Nowhere is this more adroitly pointed out to myself as when we, The Wife™ and I, temporarily stranded on one of my hometown's remarkable drawbridges during life. We have more than one kind here in Portland: the Morrison and Burnside bridges are two-leaf Bascule, the Broadway is a Rall-type (meaning it takes a long time to open and close), and the Hawthorne and Steel are vertical-lift structures.

On a recent Sunday, the Burnside caught us. This is never a bad thing, unless you have to get somewhere in a hurry, but then if that's the case, maybe you needed to be slowed down a bit. I can only speak for myself here … but if you're smart, you'll take my advice.

I've taken the above shot before, but the way it presented itself, I couldn't resist. In the far distance, the Fremont Bridge; middle distance, the Broadway Bridge; the near distance, the Steel Bridge; in the far foreground are the ramps connecting I-5 (as the East Bank Freeway) to the Banfield Freeway (a/k/a I-84), and immediately in front of us is the Burnside Bridge balustrade.

The one thing the country mouse will immediately notice on the open leaf of the bascule bridge is the way the streetlamps will stick to it. Of course, they will, naturally … the don't fold up into the bridge and they're not about to fall off. But when you come from a place where there's no such thing as drawbridge, it's the most curious thing you've ever seen.

A friend in the past, wife of a fellow who came here to see us just to visit the Rose City, squealed with delight when she saw this.

"Wow! They stay up on the bridge!"

Well, yes, where else are they going to go … but I'm a country mouse too, so I understood perfectly.

You also get to stay with on the bridge and frame some shots. And I have something of an admission to make; this we circled back around for. The such breaking through the clouds was much more impressive a few minutes before this … but I didn't have my camera out.

Bad me.

Shafts of light breaking through firmament is always an impressive sight, though, even if you don't get the best of it.

Cue the choir. This here is heaven.

The building stump, with the crane, sticks out like a snaggly tooth in a perfect smile. That's called Park Avenue West, and it's under construction again, after being in limbo for a few years when, temporarily, the money ran out. At 35 stories, it's going to be Portland's (and, hence, Oregon's) third-tallest building; that monolith in the right part of the frame is well known, of course, as the US Bancorp tower … though you can call it "Big Pink" … and even though it has more floors than any other building in Oregon, 42, it's actually about twenty feet shorter than the forty-story Wells Fargo Tower, about 13 blocks south of that, along the same street. 

One of those scenes when you see it, you know you're home.

The one below … when I took it, I was hoping for focus. The camera let me down on this one, but I just decided that I liked it more than I thought I would. The atmosphere is ineffable.