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PrintBridge of dreams
Kelsey Givens.
Photo by Tim Johnson
I’m a big supporter of provocative, daring architecture. I’ll never stop marveling at the Wexner Center, and I even liked the idea of the blue snake over the Broad Street Bridge (for those of you who remember that ambitious, but doomed project more than a few years ago).
So I was excited when I learned about the plans for the new Main Street Bridge in 2006. Freelancer Jane Ware wrote a story in the December issue of that year about the beginning stages of what was supposed to become a symbol for the city: the first single inclined arch bridge in the United States.
It was designed by Spiro Pollalis, a professor of design technology and management at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design who has worked with Santiago Calatrava, an internationally respected Spanish engineer and architect. Pollalis based the bridge’s look on nearby arches found in the COSI and Miranova buildings and the spillway in the Scioto River.
I was expecting to be wowed when the bridge was completed. So, with high expectations I headed downtown on a hot, swampy August afternoon to inspect the artwork made of steel and concrete. To cross the Scioto, it took me about three minutes and 220 steps (give or take since it’s hard to know exactly where the bridge begins and ends).
At first, I felt disappointed. The north side’s wide pathway didn’t soar above the roadway as had been advertised, and the 10-degree inclined arch, while imposing from a distance, felt smallish.
But the more time I spent there, walking up and down the gentle slope, I began to move past my initial notions. I started to slow my pace, to pause and reflect, to take in the elegant, graceful curve of the arch. It struck me that the arch revealed itself in different forms, depending on your perspective; at one time, it even appeared more vertical, almost like a peculiar harp, with the cables as strings or, God forbid, a dulcimer (my bias is showing).
Strangely, standing on the path, which is separated from the roadway, I felt as if I was in a quiet place, despite the nearby traffic and noise from the various downtown construction projects. I wanted to linger to study the bridge’s engineering, to gaze at the slowly flowing river, to absorb the skyline.
At $60 million, it’s an expensive way to get people and vehicles over a river. But that debate is water under the bridge, so to speak, since the cost has been known since the start of construction. Instead, the conversation should shift to the structure’s value—of whether the bridge eventually fulfills Mayor Mike Coleman’s promise that it will become an economic driver for downtown and the near west side as well as a signature marketing tool.
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One of the perks of subscribing to the magazine comes each September. Columbus Monthly’s Restaurant Guide is an invaluable tool, and one of our most popular niche publications. (Nonsubscribers can buy one at newsstands listed at columbusmonthly.com under “Site Services.”)
The time-consuming project is overseen by senior editor Jill Hawes, and those voluminous listings (more than 1,000 restaurants) were compiled this year by our editorial intern, Kelsey Givens, an Ohio State University journalism student. She has spent weeks tracking the essential information, including making countless phone calls. At least for her, that work unveiled some menu discoveries she’s used in recent visits to restaurants.
