Our family took a boat ride from Lake Union to Lake Washington and we passed under Montlake Bridge. Historylink.org contains a wonderful
The Montlake Bridge spanning the Montlake Cut in Seattle was completed in 1925, the last-built and easternmost of four double-leaf bascule bridges that carry vehicle and pedestrian traffic across the Lake Washington Ship Canal. It is set apart from its sister bridges by both its Gothic architectural details and its mechanical design, and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1982. The Montlake span had a rough road to realization -- Seattle voters denied it funding on five occasions between 1914 and 1922, and when a $500,000 bond issue finally was passed in 1923, it was ruled void for technical reasons. The bridge went before the voters one last time in 1924, finally gaining emphatic approval. Work on the span began almost immediately, was completed in less than a year, and the bridge was dedicated on June 27, 1925. It has served ever since as the only direct link between the Montlake neighborhood and the University District. Unlike the three other vehicle bridges crossing the ship canal, the Montlake Bridge is owned and operated by the Washington State Department of Transportation and is part of the short State Route 513 that runs from State Route 520 to Sand Point.
Building the Bridge
Construction on the Montlake Bridge (the title "Montlake-Stadium" disappeared soon after the voters approved the bridge bonds in 1924) began on July 8, 1924. With the 83-foot-high concrete piers already in place, early efforts concentrated on the bridge approaches. A $160,000 contract for this portion of the work was awarded to C. L. Creelman, with a designated completion date of February 30, 1925. To support the roadway, 35 16-inch steel casings were driven along the north and south margins of the Montlake Cut at the bridge site and filled with concrete.
What It Is
In technical terms, the Montlake Bridge is a Pratt deck truss, simple-trunnion bascule span with double opening leaves. Unlike swing bridges, when a bascule bridge opens the waterway it spans is completely free of obstructions, and unlike vertical-lift bridges, there are no height limitations for vessels. It is unique among the four bascule vehicle bridges along the canal in that it is owned and operated by the state Department of Transportation and is officially part of State Route 513, which runs from the SR 520 interchange in Montlake to Magnuson Park on Sand Point Way.
The Montlake Bridge is 182 feet long, measured from trunnion to trunnion, and has 69-foot-long approaches of reinforced concrete leading to the span at either end. When the bridge is closed, the vertical clearance between the water and the center of the span is approximately 48 feet (with some seasonal variation), the highest of the four bascule bridges along the route of the ship canal. As originally built, it had a wooden roadway 40 feet wide with two streetcar tracks and two 10-foot-wide sidewalks. In 1946, heavy steel mesh replaced the wood roadway, a project that caused the bridge to be closed to vehicles for nearly six weeks.
Although there has been discussion of, and opposition to, constructing a second bridge at Montlake, for now at least the historic Montlake Bridge will stand alone at the gateway between Seattle's two major lakes. Getting it built was a battle, and getting across it can at times be difficult, but its architectural elegance has made it one of the city's most beloved and admired public works.