This must have been an impressive sight when it was going up. This is the Colorado Street Bridge under construction across the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena. The bridge opened on December 13, 1913, and as the bridge looks about halfway done, I’m guessing this shot was taken earlier that year.
The auto-colorizer does a pretty good job of bringing this scene to life (even though it doesn’t seem to recognize sky and color it in blue.)
This is a satellite image of how the bridge looks these days. This image is from March 2021. In the 25+ years I’ve lived here, I’ve never driven across it because, as you can see, the 134 Freeway kind of dominates the area.
I remember traveling with my parents by car, heading for Pasadena by car in either the late 40s or early 50s. The Arroyo was deep and the two lane bridge was very narrow.
Well, that sounds awfully scary!
After the Rose Parade in 1949, an older brother and cousin too me along as we climbed one of those supporting arches and dropped dirt clods on cars going under, until one stopped and a big guy got out and headed towards us.
And *that* was the end of *that* adventure!
I’ve spent a lot of time in Pasadena, but I’ve never driven on it either.
It was nicknamed Suicide Bridge because it attracted jumpers. I don’t know if that’s still true. A friend of mine years ago was driving on it, and something in the steering of her car broke and her car lurched toward the railing of the bridge. She thought someone was trying to drag her over the edge! I’m sure it was just a coincidence, but an interesting one.
I believe there’s now suicide prevention fencing.
It would be interesting to see how this new gateway to Pasadena evolved over time around those bluffs. The Santa Fe & Union Pacific lines crossed the Arroyo further down out of the Garvanza side. SF went a bit east for its’ alignment across Colorado, but the UP’s Los Angeles & Salt Lake ran up in the area of this bridge corridor. No doubt there was a huge amount of change to adjust it all. In the only known photo of the Bob’s in Pasadena, there appears some kind of natural rock structure still standing which does seems odd given Pasadena looks so flattened. The given address was in the 1800 block, but how close to the bridge was this? Martin-good color job..I almost feel as woozy as the first time across those curves-in-space!
When I went back to check blogs with early photos I thought something was wrong in the interpretations…water flows downhill such that pools form in the area behind a dam. So this tells us the Scoville dam pumphouse is on the Annandale/Eagle Rock side of the riveen, where the sharp cliffs made for a treacherous ascent requiring a winding roadway down to the first 1880’s bridge….meaning those shots are taken from the Pasadena side, not the other way around. With the new Colorado Bridge up, the Scoville bridge was replaced in 1914 with another arch span down below for local traffic. It is out of use but has still been accessed on foot. Reports show some 90 suicides before a fence went up in 1937, after which only 4 people jumped as of 1950. In 1956, another went over but the guy went through the roof of the military facilities below and apparently lived…for how long, I don’t know. If all is to be believed, the Cheeseburger was invented up on that road on the west side around 1923.
Noirish LA blog posted a great 1952 shot (near page end) of the mess of the freeway construction entering Pasadena over the high bridge. Like someone tossed spaghetti in the air to see how it would land: https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/showthread.php?t=170279&page=2950