Booker, Kiehl & Whipple of Seattle was given the contract to complete the bridge's south foundation, a job that would not be completed until 1918. A primary cause was the soil at the south end of the bridge, which was found to have the approximate consistency of quicksand. That it wanted to do even this much was due to a belief that "Ravenna Park will be fixed up and made one of the chief pleasure resorts of the city," thus generating heavy streetcar use ("That Latona Bridge").The construction apparently went smoothly and the new rail-only bridge opened with little fanfare in 1902. The bridge was remodeled in 1933 and was dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. When the bridge is open there is a clear channel 175 feet wide. It does not have to be replaced every 10 years, as did the surfaces of timber bridges. 5480)Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives (Item No. Among the new communities were Fremont, Edgewater, and Latona (part of today's Wallingford), and Brooklyn (today's University District).David T. Denny was the first member of the famed pioneer family to set foot in the future city of Seattle. The areas of the city that could be reached without crossing water were rapidly filling, and by the early 1880s settlers and businesses in increasing numbers had staked claims on the south, west, and east shores of Lake Union. 1694) Design drawing, foundations, University Bridge, Seattle, 1919. In 1909, nearly four million people crossed it, by rail, horse, foot, and car, most of them drawn to the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition on the University of Washington campus. In October 1913 the editorial page of Voters would not approve a bridge at Montlake until 1924, but on March 2, 1915, they passed by a narrow margin funding for a new span to replace the Latona Bridge. Wooden paving had to be replaced every ten years or so; the steel-mesh grating has been replaced once, in 1990. We have created a browser extension. The bridge itself is of steel on concrete piers. Steel-mesh grating (invented by Walter F. Irving, of the Subway Grating Co. of Long Island, New York), represented a tremendous improvement over timbered bridges. After prolonged and heated public debate, the proposed route had been changed, and this seems to have been the deciding factor. Construction drawing, University Bridge south foundation with piling locations and depths, Seattle, 1919. 5480) Temporary draw-span open during University Bridge reconstruction, May 11, 1932 In fact, commented By 1900 there was consensus that a ship canal was inevitable, and that anything that interfered with future navigability would eventually have to give way to its requirements. A ceremony dedicating the span was held on July 1, 1891, but due to a disputed right-of-way issue, the first streetcar did not cross until July 26.Denny lost almost everything, including the railway company, during the national financial meltdown known as the Panic of 1893. Once the dredge was through, the two spans of the Latona Bridge were patched back together to await their fate.On November 24, 1916, the Seattle Board of Public Works ordered that work on converting both sections of the Latona Bridge to draw-spans should begin immediately, and that they would remain in place until the Tenth Avenue Bridge was completed, a task estimated to take two years. Somewhat south of the middle was a wide gap in the piers spanned by a truss-type structure of steel beams. According to at least one news report, it required near-total replacement, but was done in record time:"The smartest piece of construction work ever done by a street contractor in this city is conceded to have been accomplished last week by J. University of Washington: University Bridge University Bridge (open), seen from Portage Bay Place East, Seattle, Washington. The $1.6-million request included not only ship-canal bridges, but also spans over the East and West waterways of the Duwamish River south of downtown. A computer-aided system for operating the bridge was installed in the early 1980s and upgraded in 2014. If the original contract with Beers had been adhered to, the University Bridge should have been completed by September 1917. As noted above, the easternmost Latona trestle, built in 1901, had a steel-truss section spanning a gap in the piers, designed to facilitate its conversion to a drawbridge. In the end, 676 piles were driven to depths of 40 to 65 feet below the level of the lake bed before work could proceed on the concrete foundation.The United States Steel Products Company was the winning bidder for the erection of the bridge's superstructure. The University Bridge is a double-leaf bascule bridge that carries Eastlake Avenue traffic over Seattle, Washington, USA's Portage Bay between Eastlake and the University District.Built in 1919, it has an opening span of 66 meters (218 feet).