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Look Back: St. Louis’ MacArthur Bridge
Date: 11/19/2009 Album ID: 892646
Photos by Post-Dispatch staff photographers
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Dedicated on Jan 20, 1917, St. Louis’ MacArthur Bridge was originally called the Municipal Bridge, or the “free bridge”. Construction began in 1907, and it cost more than $10 million to complete.
A steam switcher sits on a temporary and dead-end construction trestle on the East St. Louis side of the St. Louis Municipal Bridge, known as the Free Bridge, during early construction. The photograph has no date, but the main spans over the Mississippi River were completed in 1912. (Post-Dispatch)
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The St. Louis side of the river spans before the street and railroad approaches were built. This photo was taken in 1911. (Post-Dispatch)
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St. Louis Mayor Henry W. Kiel prepares to open a big padlock and chain during the ceremony Jan. 20, 1917, to herald the beginning of vehicle traffic over the Free bridge. St. Louisans who resented the Terminal Railroad Association's bridge arbitrary, a toll on all goods that crossed the Mississippi River on their trains, had voted bond issues to build the bridge in a populist bid to get around the monopoly. In March 1942, three months after America's entry into World War II, aldermen renamed the bridge in honor of Gen. Douglas MacArthur. (Post-Dispatch)
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The crowd on the East St. Louis side on Jan. 20, 1917, awaiting the first traffic from St. Louis. (Post-Dispatch)
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Work underway in December 1928 on the south railroad approach on the St. Louis side of the Municipal Bridge. The city built this and other improvements to entice the major railroads to use its bridge, but the railroad barons still refused, preferring to run trains over their Eads and Merchants bridges. This trestle, still in use, takes trains to and from the yards near the Anheuser-Busch Inc. brewery and the Union Pacific line to Arkansas. (Post-Dispatch)
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Work underway in June 1935 to widen the entrance to the bridge approach in East St. Louis. The scene is at South 10th Street and Piggott Avenue, south of downtown East St. Louis. Even with the 10-cent toll that St. Louis imposed upon its free bridge in 1932 to raise money for unemployment relief, the Municipal Bridge highway deck was busy. But the railroad decks were used only by switching shuttles of freight cars. The big railroads, all members of the Terminal Railroad Association, refused to use it. The standoff between City Hall and the TRRA would last for two decades. (Post-Dispatch)
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A Pennsylvania Railroad locomotive runs up the approach from the St. Louis rail yards in a test of the tracks on Nov. 30, 1939. After years of occasional and fruitless negotiations, the TRRA lines finally were considering using the Municipal Bridge rail deck. In the background is the mill of Ralston-Purina Co., which burned spectacularly on Jan. 10, 1962. The company's executive buildings now use the site. (Post-Dispatch)
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Railroad officials gather outside their train during an inspection tour of the bridge on Dec. 11, 1939. They are, from left, Ira Davis, superintendent of the Terminal Railroad Association (TRRA); Fred B. Mitchell, general manager of the Baltimore & Ohio; Carlton S. Hadley, general counsel of the TRRA; Philip J. Watson, president of the TRRA; Clark M. Groninger, general freight agent of the Baltimore & Ohio; A.R. Ross, superintendent of the city-owned bridge; Charles S. Millard, vice-president of the New York Central; and H.C. Murphy, assistant vice president of the Burlington.
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St. Louis Mayor Bernard F. Dickmann cuts a ribbon on the railroad deck of the Municipal Bridge at midday on Jan. 15, 1940, to begin the long-sought regular use by the major railroads. Behind him and the line of dignitaries is a new, bronze-painted and streamlined Pennsylvania Railroad steam locomotive pulling the Spirit of St. Louis passenger train. The nine-car train had just left Union Station. (Post-Dispatch
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The Spirit of St. Louis locomotive blasts smoke as it bursts through a paper barricade during the ceremonial first ride across the Municipal Bridge on Jan. 15, 1940. Photographers and crowds take in the event. The Pennsy's Spirit of St. Louis offered daily service to New York. The next departing train was the Baltimore & Ohio's Diplomat, running from St. Louis to Washington and Jersey City. (Post-Dispatch)
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Mayor Dickmann with his hand on the throttle in the cab of the new streamlined Pacific style locomotive that pulled the first passenger train. He tried to give a speech on the bridge, but the resting engine made too much noise. He rode with the crew across the bridge. (Post-Dispatch)
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Westbound and eastbound service of the Spirit of St. Louis pass each other on the trestle approaching the bridge in East St. Louis on that first day. Smoke in the foreground is from the locomotive that made the first eastbound crossing. The train on the right is the westbound train headed across the river to Union Station. (Post-Dispatch)
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The demolished car of two men who were killed when it plunged 120 feet from the roadway on the East St. Louis side on Nov. 2, 1944. The westbound car missed a dangerous S-turn and smashed through the railing. Deadly crashes of that sort were all too common from the high, narrow and curving trestle that carried the two-lane roadway from East St. Louis to the river span. In this accident, Tichomir D. Gradinaroff, 57, of University City; and Army Lt. Joseph I. Helinger, 28, of St. Louis, were killed on their way home from an Elks Club event in Belleville. (Post-Dispatch)
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Edward M. Cavanaugh, building superintendent of the Automobile Club of Missouri, is booked at the downtown St. Louis police station on July 20, 1946, for refusing to pay the 10-cent bridge toll. Cavanaugh's planned action created a test case to challenge the city's right to charge a toll on the free bridge. The Auto Club cited the original city bond ordinance declaring the bridge forever free. But the Missouri Supreme Court ruled on Dec. 8, 1947, that the city was not permanently bound by that declaration, and had the right to charge tolls. (Post-Dispatch)
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City inspectors view a crack in the concrete of the roadway approach to the MacArthur Bridge at Sixth and Papin streets in August 1948. Workers patched it. (Post-Dispatch)
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The scene of another fatal plunge from the bridge approach on the East Side, this one on Aug. 4, 1948. A tractor-trailer broke through the north railing and plunged 125 feet onto ground near old Illinois Highway 3. Killed were Jay Chevalier and Frank Kezele, truck drivers from Detroit. News articles about the plunge noted that a Navy sailor had been critically injured a few days before in a crash at almost the same location. (Post-Dispatch)
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A truck tractor dangles through the railing of the bridge on the St. Louis side in October 1949. The driver, James Davis of East St. Louis, said the brakes locked, causing the tractor-trailer to swerve into the railing. (Post-Dispatch)
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Toll-booth worker John G. Murphy collects the fare on June 24, 1957. The city continued charging tolls until May 1, 1973. By then, the toll wasn't even covering the toll-booth payroll. The reason was the nearby Poplar Street Bridge, which had opened on Nov. 7, 1967. Vehicular use of the MacArthur fell sharply after that. (Buehll White/Post-Dispatch)
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Dangerous deterioration such as this hole in the roadway on the St. Louis side forced a closing of the road deck in March 1979 for a month of repairs and resurfacing. Note the bare reinforcement rods and the exposed trusses beneath the bridge. (Larry Williams/Post-Dispatch)
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Snow and ice cover part of the old Seventh Street ramp to the MacArthur Bridge in December 1981, four months after the city closed the road deck permanently because of the need for $6 million in repairs. City Hall didn't have the money, especially considering the infrequent use of the bridge. It connected Seventh Street and Chouteau Avenue, just south of downtown, to South 10th Street and Piggott Avenue in East St. Louis. By 1981, few motorists found that route convenient. (Renyold Ferguson/Post-Dispatch)
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