Arlington Bridge: A long history of promise and disappointment
Urban legend that bridge originally intended to cross Nile River has some truth: historian
The Arlington Bridge is Winnipeg's longest span but its story is far longer — underscored by colourful lore, unfulfilled promise and the weight of paint.
The history of the 111-year-old steel truss is also marked by a patchwork of repairs and Band-Aid solutions that have managed to prolong its life 80 years beyond the first calls for its replacement.
Until now, that is.
A recent engineering assessment, part of a study to see whether the structure could last another 25 years, found the ongoing corrosion has reached a point where annual safety repairs are no longer viable.
The bridge was immediately and indefinitely closed Tuesday to all traffic.
A chronicle of disappointment has dogged the bridge ever since a link spanning the rail yards was initially identified as a vital necessity in the early 1900s.
The CPR's rail yards severed the city in 1881 and expanded until the surrounding municipalities — which would amalgamate with Winnipeg in 1971 — boxed it in.
The 465-hectare yards became an enormous chasm between the north and south. Politicians proposed the Brant-Brown Bridge, an overpass to reconnect them.
At the time, Brant Street abutted the rail yards on the south and Brown Street bordered them to the north.
The names changed as part of a grand plan to establish an urban highway along what is now Arlington Street, according to local historian and blogger Christian Cassidy, who has researched it extensively, hosted walking tours and was on a community consultation panel about its future in 2018.
The idea was to ease congestion on Main Street while also creating a route unimpeded by the rail yards. Main was routinely blocked by eight sets of tracks and bustling train traffic until the subway at Higgins Avenue was constructed in 1904.
But even then, flooding often left the subway impassable.
The plan for the central beltway, as it was known, actually called for two new bridges. In addition to the one over the rail yards, another was needed across the Assiniboine River to link Arlington and Harrow Street.
Even before construction on the Arlington Bridge began in 1911, the beltway proposal had fallen apart, Cassidy said. Residents farther south from the tracks, in Wolseley, weren't keen on a highway through their neighbourhood.
Still, the Arlington Bridge project went ahead with the promise of a second streetcar nexus for the north and south, as Main was the only one. There was also the Salter Street bridge but it "was kind of a rickety wooden structure. It couldn't take streetcars, couldn't even take vehicles; it was mostly a cart bridge," Cassidy said.
Arlington Bridge opened in February 1912 and promptly proved unsuitable for trolleys. The steep approaches on either side made it dangerous, and operators refused to try, even in latter years as streetcars became lighter and brake pads were added.
The tracks were eventually removed in 1926 and used elsewhere in the city.
"No streetcar ever ran over the Arlington Bridge, so almost immediately after it opened, it sort of became a white elephant," Cassidy said.
The few people with motorized vehicles used the bridge, as did pedestrians, but it fell far short of its potential. Another failed concept was for the bridge to be a spectacle of light, with ornamental globes running the length of each side.
Excitement waned and people lost interest. The only city official there when the bridge opened on Feb. 5, 1912, was Coun. Archibald McArthur, who had been its biggest proponent, Cassidy said.
"It never really had an official opening. They were going to wait until all of these finishing touches were put on it, like the lights, and they never happened."
Its importance grew in time as more people bought automobiles, and once motorized buses replaced streetcars. But that's also when its other troubles began.
"Starting in the '30s, it started needing repairs and in the '40s those became major repairs and … Coun. John Blumberg called publicly for the bridge to be torn down and replaced with something else," Cassidy said.
"And 80 years later we're still having the debate. So love it or hate it, the bridge is a survivor. You at least have to have some grudging respect for that."
Almost regularly since 1967, city council has been told the bridge is nearing the end of its useable life, but replacement plans have been repeatedly put off in favour of repairs.
Weight restrictions were introduced in the 1960s, prohibiting large trucks and buses.
"It was kind of a further insult to the connection between the two parts of the city. No streetcar ran over [it] and eventually no buses could run over it," Cassidy said.
Crews even stopped painting the steel beams.
"That's a lot of weight that you add to the bridge by adding paint to it, a structure that large," he said. "If you look at the bridge, it's just layers of rusted steel that's flaking off. But you go over to the Redwood Bridge and it's painted.
"These are decisions that went back decades … it was the beginning of the end. I think people would have laughed back in the '60s if you said this bridge would still be around in the 2020s," Cassidy said.
Nile connection
There is an urban legend that the bridge was built by Cleveland Bridge and Iron Works in the U.K. to cross the Nile River, but went unclaimed and was sold at a bargain basement price to Winnipeg and shipped over.
No city documents exist of any sale but there is anecdotal evidence, Cassidy said.
Blumberg, when he called for the bridge to come down, said "the Arlington Street bridge will always be a bugbear. It was built to go across the Nile river, but it was peddled off to the city of Winnipeg," according to a July 30, 1946, Winnipeg Free Press story.
Was it a fib that fuelled a rumour?
Cleveland Bridge and Ironworks was embedded with the British military, which was colonizing North Africa at the time. The company was surveying a railway with several crossings of the Blue Nile, a tributary of the Nile, Cassidy said.
The project ended up being cancelled just as Winnipeg's bridge tender came out. Cleveland's price was far below any other bidder, which suggests it was aimed at offloading the structure, Cassidy said.
"There is a very good possibility that this was one of the bridges originally destined to go over the Blue Nile."
Unfortunately, it was meant to carry trains — not pass over them. The bottom of the bridge began being eaten away by the acrid smoke of the CPR's coal locomotives.
Blumberg's comment was an admonishment to the city for being overly frugal, but he unleashed a story that is now a romantic legend. Whether it's true might never be known.
"There's no smoking gun," Cassidy said. "But I think it's plausible."
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