Buffalo Hydraulics District bridges, 1995-1997

The two bridges in this series were in Buffalo's Hydraulics District from 1920 to 1997. The Seneca street bridge was a single truss crossing the railroad tracks. The Hamburg street bridge was more complex: four trusses, three of them abutting one another, the fourth separated by a flat section supported by the inside end of the single truss and the free end of the third truss. Each of the bridges offered interesting views of the other, the railroad tracks, and parts of Buffalo. They offered a gorgeous visual geometry.

Most people think of bridges as structures that cross water—and, indeed, the most dramatic bridges are just that. But cities are full of bridges that let roads get over things: railroad tracks, other roads, gullies, even other bridges. We hardly notice them, they are perhaps the most invisible kind of public architecture, but they are nonetheless part of our sense of place. The fact that we hardly notice them doesn't mean we don't sense their presence. They are part of our urban landscape and, if they are the kind of bridge that is supported by cables or trusses, they are frames through which we see the landscape in which they are situated.

I visited the Hydraulic District bridges in 1995 and 1996. In 1997, a friend called and said, "You know those old bridges you were photographing? The city is tearing them down."

"Why?" I asked.

"They got a grant," he said.

I drove to the intersection of Hamburg and Seneca and found access to the Hamburg street bridge blocked off. A big sign said "Bridge Closed. Detour." I drove around and saw that the four steel trusses and the flat connecting section and all the supports had been torn down. A few piers were already in place for the bridge that would replace them.

The new bridges are flat, made of concrete. They do the job: they get vehicular traffic across the railroad tracks near the intersection of Seneca and Hamburg streets. They are probably cheaper to maintain than the bridges they replaced. But that potential savings comes at a price: they are boring; they add nothing to the urban landscape and they replace something that did; they just connect one road to another. They haven't an iota of character.

I doubt that while the old bridges were up many people crossing them gave them a thought. And I don't doubt at all that many of those same people making that crossing now every so often feel something is missing, something had been subtracted from the environment. They might not ever know what it was.

So here are some photos to remind them of what has been lost.

This isn't the only place in Buffalo where utilitarian transportation planners replaced something interesting with something ugly and boring. The bureaucratic thugs do it to us all the time. There was, for example, a curved bridge across Scajaquada Creek on the S-curves in Delaware Park that was, a few years ago, inexplicably ripped out and replaced with a pre-fab straight bridge. That strip of straight concrete in the middle of the elegant curving road between the park and the cemetery is a monument to Ugly, and a constant reminder that bureaucrats focusing on getting things done as cheaply as possible shouldn't be allowed to mutilate the visual environment without running the choices by the rest of us first. Those guys had a grant to mutilate the visual environment too.

click here for this series

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