History
The original Park Street bridge was completed in 1893. The Park Street bridge, the High Street and Fruitvale Avenue bridges, were built by the U.S. Government in exchange for permission and rights-of-way to dredge the channel between San Antonio Creek and San Leandro Bay. It had a wooden deck, a wrought iron thru truss swing span and wooden trestle approach spans. Riding the bridge as it opened to let water traffic through, as well as fishing off the bridge, were popular activities. It took a full ten years after the bridge was built to dredge the channel.
The present bridge was designed by the County of Alameda Surveyors Office and constructed under the Federal WPA Program. it was opened in 1935 with a Grand Opening celebration that included a public wedding of a man from Oakland and woman from Alameda to symbolize the unity of the two cities with the building of the bridge.
Read more about this topic: Park Street Bridge
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment’s comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)