Bridging the Gap

Fireworks lit the sky the first weekend in March over Dallas' newest landmark -- the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge designed by famous Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. We were just four of the over 40,000 people who walked, raced, and partied on the bridge over the course of the weekend.

Pre-kids, our visit would almost surely have been at night, looking something like this:

[So, the guy who took the picture I previously had here apparently found that I had included it on my blog, notified Blogger (the host site for this blog), and demanded that I remove it.  So I did.  I am fairly amused that the photographer -- whose name was on the photo; I certainly wasn't trying to pass it off as my own -- bothered with my little blog.  So instead of admiring his lovely photo, you'll have to imagine it.  It looks like the ones below, except it was taken by a professional photographer at night, with the bridge lit up beautifully, and amazing fireworks in the background being reflected off the waters of a rain-swelled Trinity River.  So never mind.  It looks nothing like the photographs below.]

Post-kids, our visit was during the day and looked like this:



Still lots of fun, even if there were no fireworks, dignitaries, celebrity chefs, or Lyle Lovett. (We live so close that it sounded like the fireworks were going off in our backyard, which was a bit of a tease, but we sadly couldn't see them because of the trees. Hey, I'm a poet and didn't know it.)

The Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge is just one of three Calatrava-designed bridges that will one day grace the skyline. It connects the Woodall Rogers Freeway, which runs adjacent to downtown, to West Dallas, which is a notoriously neglected and underdeveloped part of Dallas. Hopes are high that the bridge will literally and figuratively bridge the gap and spur economic development in the area. The bridge is part of the larger Trinity River Project, a major public works project aimed at redeveloping portions of the Trinity River that run near downtown Dallas. The goal is to turn the river's path into a collection of sports fields, trails, nature centers, and other recreational opportunities.

I suspect that when Scarlett and Max are older, they'll marvel that there ever was a time that the bridge did not exist, and will be interested to learn that they walked (or strolled in Max's case) on it during it's grand opening. (I remember when I discovered as a kid that I-10 did not always exist, and it blew my mind to learn that it was built in the 1960s when my parents were in college. I also remember my grandfather talking about watching the UT Tower being built, another icon that is hard to imagine not existing.)

Here are some more photos from our visit.





Looking up from underneath the central arch.



Scarlett pushing Max's stroller. ("I want to push him.")







Scarlett dancing with her shadow.



Scarlett and her shadow discussing the bridge's impressive architecture. Or Scarlett looking at a rock. Hard to tell.