History
Construction on the bridge piers began in 1929, with construction of the bridge following shortly afterwards in 1931, with its dedication held on February 22, 1932, George Washington's 200th birthday. It opened to traffic the same day.
The bridge was the final link in what was then called the Pacific Highway (today's U.S. Route 99), which ran from Canada to Mexico. The bridge crosses the Lake Union section of the Lake Washington Ship Canal and, unlike earlier bridges across the canal, the height of the Aurora Bridge eliminated the need for a drawbridge. The Seattle City Council voted to build connecting portions of the highway through the Woodland Park Zoo, a decision which generated considerable controversy at the time.
It was designed by the Seattle architectural firm Jacobs & Ober, with Ralph Ober as the lead engineer on the project. Ober died in August, 1931, of a brain hemorrhage while the bridge was still under construction. Federal funding programs were not yet available, so the bridge was funded by Seattle, King County, and the state of Washington.
The bridge was nominated for the National Register of Historic Places on January 2, 1980 for its "functional and aesthetic" design qualities and for its historical status as the first bridge constructed in the region without streetcar tracks. It was accepted to the National Register on July 16, 1982.
A local landmark, the Fremont Troll—a large cement sculpture of a troll clutching a real-life Volkswagen Beetle—was installed under the bridge's north end in 1990. Up to half of the $40,000 cost for the artwork was donated from Seattle's Neighborhood Matching Fund, a local program to raise money for community projects. The sculpture was heavily vandalized in the year following its construction and large floodlights were installed on the bridge to discourage further damage.
Following the collapse of the Minneapolis I-35W arch-truss bridge on August 1, 2007, the Washington State Department of Transportation was directed to perform inspections of all steel cantilever bridges in the state that used gusset plates in their design, including the George Washington Memorial Bridge. The bridge had earlier been certified as structurally sound with no serious deficiencies detected.
In 2007, the Federal Highway Administration National Bridge Inventory found the bridge to be "functionally obsolete". The bridge was given a sufficiency rating of 55.2% and evaluated to be "better than minimum adequacy to tolerate being left in place as is". Its foundations and railings met the acceptable standards and no immediate corrective action was needed to improve it.
Beginning in June 2011, The George Washington Memorial Bridge will undergo extensive seismic retrofitting. The retrofitting is expected to complete in Fall of 2012 at a cost of $5.7 million US dollars.
Read more about this topic: George Washington Memorial Bridge
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