Historical photos from U of L Photographic Archives
Current photos by John Nation
Perhaps you jogged across the George Rogers Clark Memorial Bridge recently during your lunch hour. Or you’re one of thousands of commuters who slip easily to Louisville and back across the Ohio River via this four-lane span. Even if you only notice it once a year as framework for a barrage of Thunder Over Louisville fireworks, dusting off this link to Indiana holds some surprises.
The considerable buzz around town over plans for a new downtown arena and two new interstate connectors across the Ohio River makes no mention of this nearly 80-year-old span, but maybe it should. Popularly known as the Second Street Bridge and still a vital link between Kentucky and Indiana, it stands as a fine example of a large-scale public project that really worked. The way it was designed, financed and scaled to fit its times can be seen as something of a model for today’s planners.
Gaining our truss (clockwise from top left): Crowds walk the span on opening day; the Indiana administration building now and then; the Indiana-side entry piers; and the Kentucky entrance then and now.
How did all this begin? The Louisville Municipal Bridge (as it was originally named) was the first Ohio River bridge between Louisville and Cincinnati built exclusively for autos. The motor vehicle had come of age by the 1920s. Auto crossings to Jeffersonville were limited to the two lanes on the K&I Bridge, an 1886-constructed expanse primarily used for rail traffic, and the heavily patronized ferries and steamers at the foot of Fourth Street. Louisville was now the “Gateway to the South” and the need for economic growth in downtown Louisville propelled the bridge project to include Indiana as part of its expanded market area.
After several years of public debate, much of which was focused on financial issues, the Second Street Bridge undertaking came to life in September 1926 as a project of the Louisville Board of Trade. Final plans included a toll to pay off the $5 million estimated cost with bonds issued by a Toledo, Ohio, security firm, which contracted with the city and Mayor William B. Harrison. Philadelphian Ralph Modjeski was engaged to do the engineering and renowned architect Paul Cret (pronounced “Cray”) was commissioned to design the piers at the span’s approaches as well as the administration building. The steel-truss cantilever bridge was constructed between Jan. 28, 1928 and Oct. 31, 1929 — less than two years. It came in under budget, costing $4.7 million, including the administration building.
Despite the October l929 stock market crash, the bridge was opened to the public on Nov. 1. Tolls were set at 20 cents per animal, 35 cents per auto and $1.50 per bus. Discount coupons were distributed to Indiana residents by many Louisville merchants and commerce was brisk, adding new life to both Jeffersonville and Louisville. Thanks to tolls on traffic increases, the final debts were paid off in 1946, several years early. This windfall was largely due to the huge number of employees commuting to their jobs during World War II at the Indiana Ordnance Works and the Hoosier Ordnance Plant, situated adjacent to each other in the complex later known as the Indiana Army Ammunition Plant, near Charlestown. The bridge and administration building then were turned over to the Kentuckiana Regional Planning and Development Agency (KIPDA).
Signs of the ’20s in the steel-truss cantilever bridge include its Art Deco guardrails and entry piers.
Eventually, the administration building became the property of the city of Jeffersonville. The bridge was renamed the George Rogers Clark Memorial Bridge in 1949 (commemorated on a plaque in 1950 by the Daughters of the American Revolution). The bridge’s architecture melded well with the first L&N Railroad Co. headquarters building on the northeast corner of Second and Main, which now houses the downtown Bearno’s restaurant. It brought Louisville and nearby Southern Indiana communities closer together for civic as well as commercial reasons. One can say that its success has endured almost 100 years on all three fronts: utility, design and purpose.
Fascinating ripples in Louisville’s history are carved into the bridge piers — through names that echo local and national participation in the construction and design of this ’20s landmark, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Two remarkable talents collaborated on the bridge. As mentioned earlier, the engineer was Ralph Modjeski. Does that name ring a bell? It should recall those marshmallow center caramels, Modjeskas. They were named by a local candy maker for his mother, Madame Helena Modjeska, a celebrated Polish actress who was a great favorite when she toured with stage productions through Louisville in the late 1800s. Modjeski (in Polish, the same surname can /files/storyimages/in a different vowels for males and females) received acclaim in 1926 as chief engineer for the Benjamin Franklin Bridge over the Delaware River in Philadelphia, then the longest suspension bridge in the world, and was associated with construction of more than 50 other spans in the U.S. and Canada. Along with his business partner, Frank Masters, he oversaw engineering plans and construction for the Louisville project.
Also on the architectural and engineering team for that Philadelphia bridge and Louisville’s was the equally distinguished architect Paul Phillipe Cret. Educated in France, he was the winner in 1907 of the competition for the design of the much-admired Pan-American Union Building in Washington, D.C. Considered America’s foremost modern classicist, he was the dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and a prolific architect. Cret became a pivotal figure in the debates in the 1920s between the Beaux Arts design tradition for civic structures and the “international” style being introduced to this country by Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. (The latter designed the American Life and Accident Insurance Company Building on the Belvedere at Fifth and Main streets.)
Cret championed a simpler, flatter interpretation of the classical orders and elements, often called “moderne classicism” or Art Deco. While very popular in New York City and many other cities, the style is uncommon in Louisville’s major civic buildings, although it was drawn upon for the Bowman Field terminal in the late 1920s. Two other examples in Louisville similar to this style are the AT&T Building on Chestnut Street, completed in l930, and the former main Sears, Roebuck & Co. building at 820 W. Broadway, erected in 1928-’29.
Cret designed the pairs of entry piers at either /files/storyimages/of the new bridge. They are formed of massive blocks of Indiana limestone and carved with shallow flutes resembling columns. On the Kentucky side, the columns are broken by a wide band containing a scene carved in low relief that portrays a frontiersman and a Native-American shaking hands. On the Indiana side, the relief panel shows a settler clearing land. Both designs include an eagle with spread wings hovering above the reliefs and atop each pier is a Parisian-looking light fixture. Cret also designed the small Louisville Municipal Bridge Building on the Indiana side, where toll collection was managed. An elegant temple-like structure with a scalloped cornice, this gem was carefully restored in 1994 by the Estopinal Group, headquartered in Jeffersonville, and is now owned by the city of Jeffersonville as home to the Clark-Floyd Counties Convention and Tourism Bureau.
Additional local participants in the bridge’s construction included C. Glennon Melville, the resident engineer; Henry Bickel Co. (approaches, administration building, toll houses and plaza); and H.B. Co., electrical equipment. Major steel and masonry construction was done by the American Bridge Co. of Pittsburgh.
The late 1920s and ’30s were busy bridge-building decades, halted only by the onset of World War II. Modjeski, who died in l940, also engineered the Huey Long Bridge in New Orleans and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, among many others. In another Kentucky-Indiana project, he and Cret worked together to design and build the l930 Ohio River bridge at Maysville.
By the time Cret died in l945, he had executed plans for hundreds of civic structures and bridges, including the Duke Ellington Bridge and the Folger Shakespeare Library, both in Washington, D.C.; the Main Public Library and the John Herron Art Museum (now the Indiana Museum of Art) in Indianapolis; and the Barnes Foundation Gallery near Philadelphia. He even created streamlined designs for trains. Cret wrote and lectured widely and, like Modjeski, received extraordinary recognition for his work.
Recently selected designers for a new downtown arena in Louisville might cast a glance east to this bridge neighbor and ponder how these two men of renown brought a contemporary interpretation to their late-1920s bridge over the Ohio. Will the arena explore shape, form, light and shadow and respect the dramatic procession and scale of historic structures? Let’s hope it will add to the celebration of our city and its magnificent river site. Let’s hope, as well, that any new spans completed over the Ohio in the near future achieve some of the same excellence in form and function.
When next you travel across the Second Street Bridge, take a look for yourself and see what high standards have already been set by one of our city’s best large-scale public projects.