Washington,a City of Beautiful Bridges: Paradigms to Emulate

Abstract

Washington enjoys a unique international focus as a city planned for beauty. It incorporates a monumental baroque plan superimposed on a topography bordered by rivers and hills. Marble monuments and governmental structures carefully range a tree-lined formal landscape in the city's core. Fiercely protected height limits assure as a centerpiece the Capitol dome and monument-lined Mall. Conscious planning and architectural aesthetic effort have resulted in bridges that are an integral part of the nation's capital in 1996. Its structures reveal history, engineering excellence, and undeniable aesthetic import. Six bridges defend this thesis: Arlington Memorial Bridge, sculpture and arches formally carrying the Mall across the Potomac River; Francis Scott Key Bridge, high concrete arches whose silhouette are a major feature of the Potomac Palisades; William Howard Taft Bridge, engineering tour de force (largest unreinforced concrete structure in the world), carrying one of the city's main avenues across Rock Creek Park on multiple arches; Dumbarton Bridge, integrating architecture and sculpture in the parkscape while solving a street misalignment across Rock Creek Park; Connecticut Avenue Bridge over Klingle Valley, Art Deco steel-arched structure; and John Phillip Sousa Bridge, early 20th century axial connection of Pennsylvania Avenue, S.E., over the Anacostia River. Steel, concrete, arches, and trusses make up the aesthetic components of these structures, each in a unique visual context.