"Crossing" A Bad Bridge

This column originally appeared on Aug. 3, 2008

It was old, corrupt Noah Cross who laid down the law (in the film “Chinatown”) on how detestable things can grow more accepted over time when he told private investigator Jake Gittes, “ 'Course I’m respectable. I’m old. Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.”

But I don’t think that any amount of time is going to help the new bridge over the Brandywine Creek on South Creek Road in Cossart.

The new bridge was erected — and when I say erected I mean it in the most bureaucratic, industrial sense of the word imaginable — to replace the old Pylesville Twin Bridge. The Pylesville span was nothing remarkable, and it was certainly crumbling. If there ever was a bridge in Pennsylvania that deserved the classification “structurally unsound,” the Pylesville bridge would certainly be the Barack Obama of bridges: a leading candidate.

But it had its own certain charm, probably because it had, as Cross put it, lasted long enough. It was built in 1925, when guys with first names like Harris and Coulson were county commissioners. It had none of the rural grandeur of the nearby Smithsbridge Covered Bridge, but from a distance it fit in with the surrounding scenery, and it looked at home rising over the Brandywine. I’m guessing it was named after Howard Pyle, the artist who introduced his student N.C. Wyeth to the Chadds Ford area.

I don’t know if the new bridge has a name. It shouldn’t have a proper name. It is too ugly to deserve a name, and certainly not one given in memory of a famed American illustrator. It should be referred to solely as “County Bridge No. 83,” like No. 6 in “The Prisoner.”

When I say ugly, I do not mean ugly like some architect had an idea for a new span that just didn’t pan out, an idea borne of an overdose of chicken tikka and brussels sprouts. I mean ugly like being devoid of any thought of beauty whatsoever, there only to serve the function of keeping the cars passing over it from plunging over the edge of the road into the tranquil waters of the Brandywine below.

The bridge looks for all the world like the cement barriers dividing the lanes on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

That is a tough inspiration to live up to, but the bridge does have one thing going for it: It makes a lovely tabula rasa for graffiti. Which is nice, because when tourists come to Chadds Ford to explore the Wyeth milieu, the one thing we want to make sure they see enough of is spray paint on concrete. “Oh look, Martha, it’s like ‘Evening at Kuerners!’ With gang tags!”

I am hoping that this is all just temporary, and that the real new bridge will be built now that Gov. Rendell has decided to spend billions of dollars for bridge replacement and let the commuters on Route 202 rot in hell, or the weekday rush-hour traffic jam, whichever is worse. The real new bridge, I’m hoping, will be designed by a true architect and will make all the surviving Wyeths weep with pleasure.

And it will be a pleasure once again to drive over the Brandywine on South Creek Road, making your way to SIW Vegetables (“Open 7 Days 10-6; Saving the world one ear at a time”), where they still sell the county’s best sweet corn and let you sign an IOU for your produce if you accidentally left your wallet at home.

A Bridge Out of Place

This column originaly apeared on Sunday, April 6, 2008

There are a few things that strike you as if not out of place, then certainly just this side of odd when you travel west from West Chester on Route 842 into the wilds of East Bradford.

The first is the house with the large window behind which sits a chair and a bicycle in perfect repose opposite one another. You cannot be certain if these items are there on display, or whether the homeowner put them there months ago and has just simply forgotten them, or whether he or she sits down in the chair every now and then and contemplates going for a quick jaunt on the bike while the afternoon traffic passes by.

The second is the rusted piece of what looks to be old farm equipment along the roadside past the old Gun Club. You wonder when it was last used. What was it used for? Was threshing involved? Is it there for display purposes as well, or has the landowner been so lazy over the years that he or she can’t get around to removing it?

But for my money what stands out the most as an anachronism is the bridge over the East Branch of the Brandywine at Allerton Road.

Do not mistake what I am saying. It is a picturesque bridge, and not at all without its charms. Casey Stengel used to say that every baseball manager wants a bridge to jump off every now and then, and I think he would have enjoyed doing so here. He’d have gotten wet, but would have likely walked away none worse the wear from the plunge.

The bridge is a steel Pratt Truss bridge, painted a light shade of aquamarine, and spans about 105 feet of the Brandywine in the shadow of the Blue Rock Farm. According to the clutter of signs that line the road on its approach, the bridge can handle a weight of 8 tons, and has a clearance of 12 feet 1 inch. It was built about 1905, I learned, and if you want to look it up in Pennsylvania’s list of bridges, you’d be advised to check No. 15701504380111.

It is rated as “functionally obsolete.”

It is, as I said, a pretty bridge, but to my mind wholly out of place. The bridges of East Bradford should be made of stone, like Cope’s Bridge, or wood, like Gibson’s Covered Bridge. You want your scenery in a place like East Bradford to fit snugly, like a stone barn into a green embankment.

The bridge does not have a name, so far as I can tell. If it did, it would likely be the Jefferis Ford Bridge, since its location is the point of the Brandywine where Cornwallis found the creek sufficiently shallow enough to cross on his way to routing Washington in the Battle of the Brandywine. The sign that tells you this also notes that Cornwallis made his crossing between “1 and 2 o’clock.” No one has ever established exactly how many of Washington’s soldiers were killed on Sept. 11, 1777.

The bridge was not there that afternoon, of course. Nor were the five horses that now dot the pasture on the west side of the creek, nor the fences that line the pasture, nor the barn that the horses came from. All that remains of when Cornwallis and his troops crossed over is the rippling sound of the Brandywine, which is always exactly where it is supposed to be.