This woman stayed up way past midnight to watch white trusses swing into the air, forming a long-awaited pedestrian bridge over the Ella T. Grasso Boulevard to the Barnard School. The suspense-filled bridge-erecting show shut down traffic for over four hours Monday evening and filled bleachers with cheering fans.
The bridge will take students from the Barnard School across the perilous Boulevard to the wetlands of the West River, where they can study the natural wonders in hip boots or canoes.
Crowds filed into bleachers at 8 p.m. Monday to watch the key middle section of the 229-foot bridge get hoisted into place over the road. This man, Project Manager Ram Joglekar of Gilbane Construction, oversaw the many-stepped manuever: The 118-ton section would be rotated using two cranes, then slowly lowered into place onto two pillars, which drew their own crowd when installed in May. “In those pillars there are bolts.” You lower the bridge onto the bolts, then —‚Äù “Voila!” said Joglekar with a sweep of the arms.
Cynthia Flaherty (pictured at left) showed up with a friend and her greyhound, Spencer, for the show. A fourth-grade teacher at Barnard, she’ll be leading kids through that skywalk come September, when the school re-opens after a $43 million renovation project. Her friend Lynn Coville drives past the river every day. “It’s great that they’re now going to be able to use this stretch of the river, which is a beautiful stretch!” The riverside park has a nesting platform for osprey, the school’s new mascot, said Flaherty.
By midnight, only a few dozen diehard bridge enthusiasts remained watching under the full moon. Architect David Thompson (pictured at left), who teamed up with NYC-based Architect Roberta Washington to design the project, stuck it out to watch as the bridge-middle got hoisted up on two cranes. He said the building, funded with 95 percent state dollars, will be a state-of-the art, LEEDS-qualified sustainable building suited to the magnet school’s focus —‚Äù the environment. Solar panels will provide 16 percent of the electricity. The skywalk leads to a nature center, where an observation deck with telescopes overlooks the West River landscape. Kids in the K‑8 school perched on that deck can also look down on the “green” roof of a first-floor classroom —‚Äù covered in a cedum mix, an array of hardy plants surviving on rainwater. The nature center will also be used for park ranger programs.
A man stood in each pillar, guiding the massive structure on to the pins.
At 12:25 a.m., the bridge was complete.
These women of the West River Neighborhood Association, including Joyce Poole (pictured at top of story, and here in middle), hugged and clapped and cheered. “It’s fantastic!” said one. “It’s so nice!” said another. And they walked back home to bed.