Today, there isn’t even a trace remaining of a bridge across the James River in Richmond, despite it having been a vital part of the city’s infrastructure for one hundred years. The massive pylons on the river floor that once held tons of metalwork in the air are gone, and the thousands of feet of the famously creaky wooden roadway have vanished. In its place, the gracefully arched but otherwise soulless 1972 Manchester Bridge carries multiple lanes of traffic, making a once-dramatic journey between Downtown Richmond and Manchester completely unremarkable. The Ninth Street Bridge closed fifty-three years ago, but nevertheless a correspondent for the Shockoe Examiner was there to record the moment in Richmond history.
On its final day of
service, a last few cars make their way across what was universally known as
the Ninth Street Bridge. Note the streetcar tracks are still in place in the
wooden bridge deck and are covered with steel plates.
The same scene
today.
The birth of what was originally called “ the James River Bridge” at Ninth Street was a cause for celebration in Richmond and Manchester, the smaller town on the south side of the river. The cornerstone of the bridge was laid on the Manchester side of the river on May 23, 1871 with all appropriate ceremony and Masonic ritual. An enormous parade celebrated the day, too, which was so large it had to form up on Broad Street before it wound its way through town and crossed over Mayo’s Bridge, the only other pedestrian crossing. After the procession arrived at the site, Judge B. R. Welford gave a long and florid speech, filled with visions of booming commerce flowing across the new bridge and punctuated with classical lore and references to the glories of the Civil War.
Manchester was a
separate entity from Richmond and the town on the south side of the James
declared itself an entirely independent city in 1874. Indicative of the
separation between the two that the river imposed, Richmond newspapers had
correspondents assigned to Manchester who reported events there as though from
a foreign country. On a bitterly cold January afternoon in 1873 the Manchester
reporter for the Richmond Dispatch bundled up and walked down to the
site of the new bridge. He regarded the river, the unfinished structure, and in
the distance the tall buildings of downtown Richmond. “If no unlooked for events occurs in less
than three months,” he later wrote hopefully, “free communication may be expected with
the metropolis, predictions to the contrary notwithstanding.”
Richmond’s Free Bridge as seen from the north bank of the James
River, ca. 1900.
By June 1873, even
though the approaches to the new bridge were incomplete and no guardrails were
in place to keep them out of the river, impatient residents of both sides of
the James crossed what became known as the “Free Bridge” on foot and in light
carriages to experience the new bridge for themselves. “The railing will also be put in position
in a short time, and when lighted up, and the railway is built, the traffic
both for business and pleasure will be immense,” reported the Richmond
Dispatch. “As it is, the promenade and the view are
both delightful.” The next year, when the span was fully opened, the Richmond
Dispatch again praised the bridge: “…the Free Bridge is the noblest public
work of this locality that has been accomplished by city means…No man not
hopelessly prejudiced can cross that bridge without feeling the pleasure that
it affords – its commanding view, its facility of intercourse between the two
sides of the noble river which is alike our source of delight and our source of
life.”
In May 1889, a
powerful religious revival swept the African American churches of Richmond. More
than two hundred people were baptized in the shallow water below the north end
of the Free Bridge, including a hundred new members of the Rev. John Jasper’s Sixth Mount Zion Church in Jackson Ward. Thousands of
people gathered on the bridge deck to watch the ceremony, to the point the
Mayor was called and advised the bridge couldn’t accommodate the crowd because
of the condition of the structure. Mayor Ellyson rushed to the riverside, gathered
all the policemen he could, blocked the bridge and gradually cleared the crowd
from it, perhaps preventing a disaster that would have made the death toll from
the famous collapse of a floor in the Capitol in 1870 that killed sixty people
look tiny in comparison.
The Free Bridge is
left of the railroad trestle in this undated postcard view of the
industrialized James River valley, with Manchester in the distance.
The fact the new bridge had no toll was critical for commerce across the James and many heavy wagons thundered back and forth across the wooden deck of the Free Bridge. Through the years, though, only small appropriations were made to keep it in repair. During some intervals when the condition of the structure began to look particularly dire, it was closed to all but foot traffic.
A 1972 photo of the bridge, showing the rough wood construction of the bridge deck and walkways.
Decades rolled by
and the Free Bridge limped along, occasionally closed for repair or barricaded
as unsafe but always patched up and returned to use. New interest in the strength
of the Free Bridge was generated in 1911 with the purchase of Mayo’s Bridge by the City of Richmond. The immediate demolition of Mayo’s and
construction of its replacement left the Free Bridge and the Boulevard Bridge
(the “Nickel Bridge”) for some months the only way to cross the river except
for railroad trestles.
August, 1969: a
National Guardsman stands on the 1873 Ninth Street Bridge and watches the
flooded James River, which reached a record height that summer during Hurricane
Camille. In the distance, a loaded coal train has been parked on the 1916
Atlantic Coast Line Railroad trestle in an effort to help hold it in place in
the rushing water. The railroad bridge was demolished the following year.
By the 1960s,
Richmond (having consolidated with Manchester in 1910) finally decided to
replace what was now known simply as the “Ninth Street Bridge.” Terming the
bridge, “old,
inadequate, and restricted,” the Richmond Times-Dispatch reminded
readers that the structure was already forty years old when its replacement was
first proposed in 1913. Bridge design had vastly changed by then and the old structure,
with its wooden deck and sidewalks and spindly cast iron railing must have
looked quaint, even by the standards of the early 1900s. By the 1960s, thumping
across the uneven wooden deck of the Ninth Street Bridge was a constant
reminder to Richmonders that the structure had far outlived its lifespan.
Richmond
Times-Dispatch, July
14, 1969.
A new bridge was designed, financed, and constructed and given the official name of the “Manchester Bridge.” The celebration of its opening July 8, 1972 was probably similar to the one that had inaugurated the earlier bridge ninety-nine years before. There was a procession, a ribbon cutting, a Dixieland band, an honor guard, and twenty-three speakers on a stage at the northern end. The dignitaries squinted into the glare from the pristine white concrete surface at a crowd of a hundred people. A motorcade formed up, pretty girls (one wearing a sash that proclaimed her “Miss At Long Last”) waved from the back of convertibles. Henry Gonner, a fixture at every Richmond parade or opening, happily honked the horn on his Model T Ford as he led the parade one last pass over the old bridge, literally in the shadow of its enormous concrete successor.
Henry Gonner
(1913-2004) was the Director of the Central Richmond Association and a
consummate Richmond booster, arranging events, parties, and celebrations that
called attention to Richmond as a dynamic and thriving city. It was inevitable
that Henry would be at the opening of the new bridge at the wheel of his 1913 Model
T, dressed in his usual duster and goggles and as always grinning and waving. The
new Manchester Bridge was just the kind of development Henry loved to see in
Richmond: big, modern, and progressive.
Henry Gonner leads
the last motorcade across the 1873 bridge on July 8, 1972.
Below the new
Manchester Bridge, the last few cars made their way along the old wooden deck
which had seen troop transports and military convoys, screaming fire engines
and wagons groaning with bricks. The bridge had carried horses and carriages,
mules pulling freight, automobiles and trucks and streetcars. It felt the
footfall of thousands of weary feet, commuting back and forth to work in the
factories that lined the river. And now it was all coming to an end.
At the appointed
time, cones set in the roadway on the approaches shifted traffic to the new
bridge, and personnel from the City dragged “BRIDGE CLOSED” signs into the street. The
Ninth Street Bridge, having transported Richmonders since Ulysses S. Grant was President,
finally fell silent. A century of service had come to an end.
- Selden
