Like ballet dancers waiting for the curtain to rise, sailboats, lithe and graceful, silently circle in the Chicago River seemingly eager to get to the lake, where they can ride the wind.
To get there, they must rely on industrial-age technology to clear a path.
They need the bridges to open, and that involves the movement of massive iron gears and huge concrete counterweights to tilt millions of pounds through a 45-degree arc to point skyward. If the boats are ballerinas, the bridges are Olympic weight lifters.
Among the hallmarks of Chicago are its trunnion bascule bridges, in which the bridge leaves are hinged on opposite river banks. The word “trunnion” comes from a French term for pivot point, while bascule is French for seesaw. Among bridge buffs the world over, the trunnion bascule bridge is called “Chicago style.”
The opening of these bridges to begin boating season is one of the city’s rites of spring, a frustration to drivers whose roads become walls. Because the river is a federally designated navigable waterway, boats — even a single boat — have precedence.
Chicago’s movable bridges are controlled from little bridgehouses that sit next to each bridge — 28 on the south and main branches of the Chicago River, where most of the recreational boat traffic flows, and four on the north branch. These are staffed as needed. There are five bridgehouses along the Little Calumet River that are staffed 24/7 to serve commercial traffic.
The quarters tend to be spartan — a bathroom and a control room with all the levers, buttons and keyed switches needed to operate the bridge. That’s about it. But there is one big plus. In order to see the boats coming, that the bridge is cleared before a lift, and that the leaves are down and secure after a lift, there have to be windows all the way around. The views of the river and its banks are stunning.
Now, instead of resident tenders, mobile teams leapfrog along the river, synchronizing so that as one bridge closes behind the boats, the next one is being readied to open. The houses (except for the five-story, southwest tower of the Michigan Avenue bridge that is the site of the McCormick Tribune Bridgehouse & Chicago River Museum) aren’t open to the public, a fact made abundantly clear by the “KEEP OUT” signs, the metal doors, chains, padlocks.
Jesse Jones has been a bridge tender for the Chicago Department of Transportation for 22 years, and his hands play the control panels like an accomplished pianist at his Steinway. Each house is different, built by different companies in different eras with different control panels. Some tenders prefer the LaSalle Street house for its elegant architecture, some go for the recently renovated Lake Street house, which dates to 1916.
Not all lifts are alike. The Lake Street lift is complicated because it is two levels and the upper level carries CTA tracks. That means Jones and his partner, Garabed Damarjian (who left high school teaching for bridge lifting 17 years ago), stay in constant communication with people from the CTA, the Streets and Sanitation Department and CDOT. During a lift, representatives of those agencies come in and out of the bridgehouse to throw the switch that relates to a particular area of responsibility. Power to the CTA must be shut off and switched to the bridge before the lift can commence.
Jones starts the process by turning on the clanging signal and flashing lights to clear the bridge. That’s automated now, but there’s a big pull-cord in the floor of the Michigan Avenue tender’s house that connected to a bell that was rung manually. It’s not connected anymore.
“Now, I’m dropping the gates,” he says. “That’s to keep the traffic and pedestrians off the bridge.” Crews from the various agencies also are outside for security. “I’m releasing the center lock [holding the two leaves of the bridge in place]. I’m releasing the heel locks [holding the counterweighted back end].” He pulls a long, floor-mounted lever with a foot-pedal release, and announces, “It’s lifting.” A backup lift lever is nearby just in case things get stuck, which, in early spring, after a long winter of not moving, they sometimes do.
No problem this time. The double-deck Lake Street bridge rises up like a circus elephant lifting itself to its hind legs. The lift seems amazingly quick before automatically braking to a stop at the zenith. So precisely balanced are these behemoth bridges that they have to be balanced anew whenever they are repainted.
The steps are reversed for lowering the bridge. The heel locks are set; the center lock is set.
Jones looks out over his handiwork.
“Lake is down and locked,” he says. “Traffic flowing.”
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A gallery of bridge-tender houses
CORTLAND STREET
The nation’s oldest trunnion bascule bridge spans the river at this location. Built in 1902, it established Chicago as a leader in bridge engineering. The tender’s house has been re-created in its quaint original style.
MICHIGAN AVENUE
The two-level bridge and its houses were completed in 1920 and designated a Chicago landmark in 1991. The sculptures were added in 1928. The museum in the southwest tower makes it the only house open to the public.
LASALLE STREET
The bridge, built in 1928 at a cost of $2.5 million, is flanked by four elegant, Beaux-Arts towers. They show the influence of Parisian design on Chicago, a style that recently has returned to the city.
ASHLAND AVENUE
This 1936 Art Deco-style house is now inoperable and has become covered with vines. Some of its windows are broken and patched with plywood. Look closely, and there’s a Deco bas-relief peeking out from the foliage.
HARRISON STREET
This 1960 bridgehouse is far more an expression of modern functionality than the quaint Victorian on Cortland Streetor the impressive 1920s Beaux-Arts structures crossing the river leading to the North Side.
–Charles Leroux
Bridge works
Wait, there’s more online! At chicagotribune.com/access, you can take our video tour, see more photos, examine our interactive graphic and explore our previous adventures.
