The Bridges of New Jersey: Portraits of Garden State Crossings

Introduction

1 INTRODUCTION T H E A L L U R E O F T H E B R I D G E Each of us has an individual experience and reaction to bridges. There is the immediate pride in the human achievement of erecting something tangible, lasting, and beneficial to humanity. On further reflection, we also recognize that a bridge has positive connotations when used as a metaphor for linking two places, ideas, persons , groups, and so forth. We speak of building bridges to create harmony and working relationships. The notion of a bridge in conversation and in social life is one of strength and importance, of a construction that enables us to cross to a place previously unreachable or, at best, attainable only after considerable effort. As engineer and author Charles S. Whitney wrote in Bridges of the World (1929), “Bridges typify progress more than any other structures built by man.” Perhaps without realizing it, we feel the sense of connectedness we need and desire as human beings when we look upon the most obvious physical manifestation of something that brings us together. To appreciate the bridges of New Jersey and gain a deeper understanding of their history, we need to know something about bridges in general. We can begin with the simple definition provided by one of America’s first bridge engineers, Squire Whipple (1804–1888). “A Bridge,” he wrote in 1847, “is a structure for sustaining the weights of carriages and animals in their transit over a stream, gulf or valley.” Thomas Pope, writing his own history of bridges early in the nineteenth century, expanded on this definition and the purpose of a bridge in a way that anticipates the modern metaphor of the bridge as connection: That Bridges were requisite in the earliest periods of time, we cannot doubt, from the knowledge we possess of the common operations of nature. Seas, Lakes, Rivers, Brooks, and Swamps, must have existed formerly as well as now; and man, in his common pursuits, must have invented means of surmounting these obstacles to his correspondence with his fellow man, and keeping up the chain of connexion so necessary to his existence, as well as to his gratification. Most likely, primitive humans first discovered bridges by chance. Perhaps a river carving its way through rock formed a natural bridge, or a vine became tangled in trees on opposite banks, or a tree fell across a stream. The American bridge builder and engineer David Steinman speculated that nature in fact provided the inspiration for the three major types of bridges—the corbelled arch, beam, and suspension bridge—and that prehistoric humans learned from and imitated these naturally occurring features. Awe-inspiring natural bridges—for example, Landscape Arch and Rainbow Bridge in Arches National Park in Utah—attest to the strength of the arch, and we may reasonably surmise that the first human-constructed bridges were simple structures that followed this pattern observed in nature. The Romans, although not the inventors of the arch (credit goes to the Babylonians), can fairly be said to have successfully exploited its principles. Some of the stone arch bridges built by Roman engineers throughout the once vast empire survive to this day. In England, evidence remains of primitive “clapper” bridges (from the Latin claperius, meaning “pile of stones”). These first beam, or stringer, bridges were formed by laying a flat stone or log on supports without need for complex mathematical calculations or resolution of engineering problems. By the same token, suspension bridges may have their origins in ropes and vines used for carrying people over ravines and canyons. Perhaps someone first swung from one point to another, and later kept the vine or rope attached to two points so that cargo or persons could slide along from one end to the other. Eventually , these supports would hold another vine or rope over which people could walk, ultimately becoming a “roadway” in itself. Anthony Flint, in “Some Highlights in the History of Bridge Design,” describes the history of bridge engineering as a process of synthesis. Even though advances T H E B R I D G E S O F N E W J E R S E Y 2 in construction materials have occurred, the basic structural forms, he contends, have “changed little since early times.” For example, the stone arch bridges constructed by Sumerians six thousand years ago might...