The Three Bridges - 2

The Hell Gate Bridge, 1916. The Tyne Bridge, 1928. The Sydney Harbour Bridge 1932. But parentage is confusing. The Tyne Bridge and the SHB were both built by Dorman, Long and Company of Middlesborough in the UK. The Tyne having been designed by Mott, Hoy and Anderson, Civil Engineers, based in the UK. The SHB was designed by Dr JJC Bradfield, NSW Public Works, and Ralph Freeman, Dorman Long in cohort. The Hell Gate was designed by Gustav Lindenthal. It is claimed that the SHB is "based on" HG. Yet it is not claimed that Tyne is based on HG, even though Dorman Long was involved in both, and HG was over a decade earlier. All very incestuous. But suffuce to say, that some of the info in Wiki is contradictory, and just plain wrong.

Three locality shots, showing the terrain for each bridge. SHB was an obvious promontory to promontory. There was already a massively patronised ferry service running the route of the bridge. And note, to this day, there is no additional bridge to interrupot the "eye-ful". You see, our city planners built a tunnel on the harbour floor when bridge capacity was strained. If you stood on the SHB and spat (to keep the analogy going), you could reach the water over the tunnel. It is between the SHB and the SOH. However, the other two bridges have not scored so well in the beauty stakes. HG had the Triborough Bridge go up alongside it in 1938. Sure they were trying to connect a whole bunch of islands in that through-put way that motor-ways have. But, ugly comes to mind. As for the red, known as "Hell Gate Red", the paint job in recent years was lousy by all reports. And the Tyne Bridge? Not sure why it is that blue/green tone. But that is more appealing than the red. But Tyne is one of seven bridges within spitting distance, some of which were already there in 1928. And Paris, Newcastle-Gateshead ain't.

There are some terrific albums available online showing the construction of each bridge. Although they are similar shapes, the way to that shape was quite different. Once again, the large image is the SHB. The image on the left is Hell Gate, and on the right is Tyne.

More on the Three Bridges in my next post: the type of traffic each bridge caters for, tolls, and tourism.