The city's former bridge piers are reminders of a time gone by

Every time architect Louis Astorino looks out the window of his Downtown office on Fort Pitt Boulevard, he sees a clean slate in the form of dirty stone.

Two stone piers that once supported the Wabash Bridge remain on the banks of the Monongahela River near Station Square. They're among a half-dozen old bridge piers lining the shores of the three rivers. They still stand, mostly because of the high cost to remove them and their historical significance, historians said.

"They've been there forever," said Astorino, whose design firm is overseeing a project to renovate the Manchester Bridge pier near Heinz Field on the North Shore. "They're doing nothing, so we're giving this one a second life. We're making this one usable."

Records from the U.S. Coast Guard Office of Bridge Administration in St. Louis show the Pittsburgh & West Virginia Railroad owns the Wabash Bridge piers and that PennDOT owns the piers of the Point and Brady Street bridges. The city-county Sports & Exhibition Authority owns the Manchester Bridge pier, which is being turned into a memorial that will include a statue of the late Fred Rogers.

No plans are in place for the other piers, but there have been ideas:

• A proposal in 2006 called for transforming the Manchester Bridge pier -- and later the Wabash piers -- into public climbing walls.

• Port Authority in the late 1960s proposed Skybus, a rubber-tired transit system that was to have been built atop the existing Wabash piers.

Those plans fell through, but one proposal didn't.

During a Three Rivers Arts Festival in the late 1970s, a French artist attached 6-foot-tall metal rods atop a Wabash Bridge pier near the Mon Wharf and affixed banners to them, said Franklin Toker, a Pitt professor of art and architecture. The rods are still there.

"That was a brilliant idea," Toker said. "It wasn't invasive at all. It was really ahead of its time."

Historians covet the craftsmanship of the piers but differ on how to preserve them.

"Most of the piers are really very handsome, and letting them stand out on our riverside both saves a lot of money and it remembers the bridge," said Arthur Ziegler, president of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. "The more we can keep these intact but still make new uses of them the better."

He described the cost to raze the piers as excessive.

Local bridge historian Bruce S. Cridlebaugh said he doesn't want the piers to be "irretrievably altered."

"It's the fact that once the pier masonry is changed, it can never and will never be restored," said Cridlebaugh, who runs the Web site www.pghbridges.com.

Toker said bridge piers admirers should be "half-grateful."

"I don't like the fact that this one new thing would detract from the (Manchester Bridge) pier, but at least now it's being paid attention to," he said. "Things have to change."

Additional Information:

Bridging the gap

Despite being so large -- the Manchester Bridge pier is 13 feet wide, 60 feet long and 80 feet high -- old bridge piers tend to be invisible to most folks, mainly because they've been around so long and blend into the landscape. Here's a little help pinpointing piers around Pittsburgh and the bridges they once supported:

Manchester Bridge , 1915-70

Pier on the North Shore by Heinz Field

Wabash Bridge , 1904-48

Two piers in the Monongahela River: one by the Mon Wharf near Stanwix Street, the other by the Gateway Clipper Fleet dock

Point Bridge , 1927-70

Near Point State Park on the Mon River side

Wilmot Street Bridge , 1907-30s

Stone piers stand beneath the Charles Anderson Bridge, which carries the Boulevard of the Allies into Schenley Park.

Brady Street Bridge , 1896-1969

A small piece of a pier hides under the Birmingham Bridge near Forbes Avenue

Source: PghBridges.com