Bridges
Wood is good. Mayor Gluba asked for my reaction to the proposed pedestrian bridge over River Drive at last night’s Council worksession and I hope I didn’t cause anyone to be late to their post-meeting responsibilities with three, one syllable words. I was previously misinformed the bridge would be metal and had concerns about historical authenticity and … well, adding another oxidation sculpture to the scraping and repainting routine. A wood bridge, which honors the craft of the original rail bridge across the river? That’s another story, at least for this woodworker. That River Action will raise the funds for construction and maintenance, is all the better.
Off all the physical arts, I find bridge design and building to be the most laudable. There is some essence of humanity in deciding to think about, design and construct a bridge. To get from here to there, for any of a variety of reasons, across any of a variety of chasms, is the distillation of hope (or need) meeting determination. The pre-bridge condition is want. I am here. I want to be there. The post-bridge condition can also be want, just extended some distance. The railroad didn’t stop once it crossed the river. It continued westward. Some of us, however, stayed. The want was satisfied.
Thinking forward to the grand opening of the “First Bridge”, I’ll be curious to watch what it is we are celebrating. Will we be celebrating the want that was not yet satisfied in crossing the river? The want that pushed westward to the Pacific? Or will we be celebrating the want that found its home here, in Davenport? Probably some of both, would be my guess. But this is my third most interesting question (personally) on the topic.
The second most personally interesting question is how this homage to the original bridge to everywhere will sit in the spirit landscape of Davenporters in relation to our second most recent bridge. Not the most recent bridge at Credit Island. The one before that. The one 73% of Scott County voters said we should build, connecting our downtown to our riverfront in spectacular aerial fashion. By the time the replica of the original bridge to everywhere is built, the casino will have floated downstream. The Skybridge will stand proud in a remade park at the foot of Main Street, fulfilling its purpose of connecting Davenporters and visitors to a one of a kind panorama of earth, sky and water. If that’s nowhere, you really do need some help with your imagination.
The most interesting question to me is how satisfied, and distracted, are we going to be remaking a bridge from the 1800s? It was a laudable (and mercantile) effort of the era to push that bridge across the river. It will be laudable (and mercantile) to connect a new neighborhood to a new park. But the more pressing question - bridge to the past or bridge to the future - doesn’t get settled with even the best designed and sited ped bridge.
Bridge as a verb is even more laudable than bridge as a noun. As we cut the ribbon at the grand opening of this new gift from River Action, what new bridge to the future - for the generation following - will we have thought about, designed and constructed?
