While in Spokane, take the City Drive and you'll be treated to most all of the city's sights, both downtown and as far out as Spokane Valley to the east and Mead to the north. This one, the Monroe Street Bridge, is right downtown and can be seen from several vantage points, including the window of one's car.
The Monroe Street Bridge
completed in 1911 at a cost of $500,000, has one of the largest monolithic concrete arches in the world. The single center span measures 281 feet in length, 71 feet in width, 136 feet in height, and weighs 13,430 tons. Small arches above the main piers carry out the graceful design of the bridge; concrete buffalo skulls are affixed to the sides of the roadway. The structure, designed by city engineers with the firm of Cutter and Malgram as consulting architect, has been cited for its beauty; drawings and plans of the bridge are on exhibit at the Sorbonne, Paris.
Washington: a guide to the Evergreen state - Page 257-258
Given that the guide was written in the 1930s we may take the above superlative with a grain of salt, in that there are certainly many "
monolithic concrete arches" of greater length extant today. That said, the bridge still stands, daily carrying thousands of vehicles and pedestrians over the Spokane River Below.
A seemingly unlucky location for a bridge, this is the third built on the spot. The first, a wooden bridge thankfully burned down in 1890, one year after its construction, and the second, a steel bridge, proved not to be up to the task, resulting in its replacement by the present arch span in 1910. This bridge underwent a substantial restoration beginning in 2003 and was reopened in 2005. An interesting feature of the bridge is the concrete buffalo skulls mounted on the pavilions.