The Longfellow Bridge

The Longfellow Bridge looks out over the Esplanade, the sparkling waters of the Charles River basin where boats sail from April to November, and the city of Boston with its gold-domed capitol building atop Beacon Hill providing a backdrop for this scenic view. The 3,500-foot Longfellow Bridge on the Charles River basin between Cambridge and Boston affords a crossing for pedestrians, cars, and passengers on trains traveling between the Charles MGH station in Boston and the Kendall Square subway stop in Cambridge. This interesting stone crossing replaced the West Boston Bridge, a lower, wider wooden drawbridge constructed in 1793, to connect Cambridgeport and Boston’s West End while continuing to provide passage for shipping on the river. Early in the 1900s, a time when pedestrian and car traffic over the bridge was beginning to out pace that of naval shipping, urban planners and investors began a discussion that later involved Naval officials and lawmakers at the national level to construct a stationary bridge that would be less disruptive to newer forms of commerce while providing twenty-seven feet of clearance for sailing vessels. Municipal architect Edmund Wheelwright designed the arched stone structure that we see today, with its four turrets, inspired by European bridges such as the Charles Bridge in Prague.

The name for the bridge was changed to “Longfellow” in 1927 in honor of the poet and Harvard professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who lived nearby in Cambridge and whose frequent evening walks across the previous wooden bridge to visit the lovely Frances Appleton on Beacon Hill had inspired him to write a poem “To the River Charles.”

Currently, the Longfellow Bridge, is undergoing structural improvements and renewal or replacement of its unique architectural features during a three-and-a-half year project under the direction of the state’s Department of Transportation. The reconstruction includes upgrading for structural safety and improved access for all, while maintaining the beauty of this early twentieth century bridge. Efforts have been in place from the beginning to use original materials wherever possible, that have included a state-wide search for granite that would resemble that was used in the original construction and a discussion about the use of rivets that had been applied in previous construction.

One interesting feature of this historic bridge is the ornamentation of the four central turreted piers with stone figures of the prows of Viking ships, inspired by a Harvard chemistry professor’s contention that Norse sailors had visited the (Massachusetts) bay over a thousand years ago. A statue of Leif Erickson at the western end of Commonwealth Avenue also attests to this theory. Another interesting characteristic of the Longfellow Bridge is that the four turrets are said to resemble salt and pepper shakers, leading some to refer to it as the “salt-and-pepper bridge.”

Sources that were helpful in writing this blog were:

Karl Haglund’s Inventing the Charles River, John Harris’ Historic Walks in Cambridge, and William P. Marchione’s The Charles, A River Transformed.