Bridge Postcards of 2024

Another annual selection of pontine postcards - the products of hours of rummaging through bulging shoe boxes stuffed with unsorted postcards, priced at 4 for £1, at Postcard Fairs where the average age is about 75.  Most of the cards inspected are depressingly dull but now and then something different will startle the eye - it may be an unorthodox composition, or an inventive viewpoint, or a remarkable quality of printing, or a subject you never expected to see celebrated in this way. The physical discomforts are many - an aching neck, a weary eye and the close proximity of fellow collectors, some of whom lack any concept of boundaries or interest in personal hygiene but the compensation is a growing stack of visual treasures.  The show begins with three examples where a viaduct intrudes into an urban setting - Newcastle, Morlaix and Truro. It concludes with some elaborate ironwork from Ohio and Littlehampton. In between are railway viaducts from California and Fontainebleau, a pair of bridges spanning the Niagara River, urban river crossings from Berlin and St. Louis and a primitive wooden bridge over which three young women display their traditional Dutch costume. My favourite example comes from Preston where an enormous viaduct marches over river and countryside alike, foregrounded by neo-classical parkland.

 

Bridges of 2024

This year’s choice of bridges (mostly) crossed and photographed would be very modest but for a visit to Newcastle, which it must be admitted has some fine specimens. From west to east along the Tyne, our first is the High Level Bridge designed by Robert Stephenson (1845-49), with T E Harrison - the rail deck is supported by cast-iron box columns while the road deck is suspended from the rail deck by wrought-iron hangers encased in the box sections. Grade I listed by Historic England. Next is the Swing Bridge of 1868-76, designed and built by W G Armstrong & Co. - a wrought-iron structure supported on cast-iron rollers to allow free movement of shipping, operated by the original Armstrong-built hydraulic engines and controlled from the cupola that spans the deck. Listed by Historic England as a Scheduled Monument and last opened in November 2019. The New Tyne Bridge (1925-28) comes next, built by Dorman & Long of Middlesbrough and designed by Mott, Hay & Anderson - the profile of its single span is often employed as a symbol of the city.  The design is a reduced version of the 1916 design produced for the Sydney Harbour Bridge - the four massive pylons, faced in Cornish granite were intended to house warehouses with freight and passenger lifts, none of which came to pass.  Grade II* listed by Historic England.  Finally to the only bridge over the Tyne designated for pedestrian and cyclist use - the Gateshead Millennium Bridge (1995-2001) designed by Wilkinson Eyre. The deck is suspended from an elegant parabola that can be rotated through 45 degrees to permit the movement of passing ships - a major element in the riverside regeneration project as an artistic and cultural quarter that in turn led to the conjoined coinage of Newcastle-Gateshead.

Finally, two views of the Scarborough Cliff Bridge, a pedestrian footbridge opened in 1827 when it was known as the Spa Bridge, it's an unusual example of a multiple-span cast iron bridge. Connecting the town centre with the Spa, it originally operated as a toll bridge. In the view from the deck the imposing bulk of Cuthbert Brodrick's Grand Hotel looms over the scene. Grade II listed structure.

 

26 rue Vavin, Henri Sauvage, 1912

Adaptability is what distinguishes Henri Sauvage from his architectural contemporaries. After designing an expansive, florid Art Nouveau mansion, Villa Majorelle in Nancy (1901-2) at the age of 28 - he was quick to leave all that biomorphism behind him and by 1912 was busy designing this Parisian apartment building in rue Vavin in Montparnasse with all the clarity of purpose, elegance, simplicity and formal organisation absent from the Art Nouveau stylistic vocabulary.  All this well before the Great War snuffed out the last dying embers of the style. In the 1920s and 1930s he steered in the direction of Art Deco - a move that culminated in his redesign of La Samaritaine department store. A man who had mastered the art of staying one step ahead of the competition.

In rue Vavin Sauvage experimented with the idea of stepping back the floors of the building to leave each apartment with outdoor space for leisure or recreation.  It was progressive thinking for its time and popular with the occupants, who in the first such case in Paris were members of a cooperative formed to finance the building.  Despite being much acclaimed on completion there were few imitators - higher returns could be made with more conventional spatial arrangements. The exterior was clad throughout with gleaming white tiles, making for a contemporary uncluttered appearance.  Inspiration came from Otto Wagner and others who had been developing innovative ceramic facades in Vienna for several years.  The judicious placement of blue tiles enhances the sculpted forms beneath the balconies and emphasises the window recesses.  The last of the photos illustrates the difficulty in sensing the building as a whole thanks to a group of unhelpfully placed trees.