PARK AND CEMETERY. 
6a 
TWO TYPES OF APPROPRIATE MONUMENTAL BRIDGES 
In Europe good-looking bridges span every consider- 
able stream or gully. In the United States a few beau- 
tiful bridges were built in early times. They were 
succeeded by extremely ugly ones and now, in an occa- 
sional instance, an attempt is being made to adapt mod- 
ern methods of bridge construction to the eternal prin- 
ciples of good design. 
In eastern Massachusetts two notable examples of the 
effort to produce the bridge beautiful appear in the re- 
cently dedicated Charles Eliot memorial bridge on Great 
Blue Flill and in the practically finished West Boston 
bridge connecting the cities of Boston and Cambridge. 
The former of these structures is primarily ornamental, 
the other strictly utilitarian, but each illustrates admir- 
ably the new spirit of our architects as regards con- 
struction to span waterways or water courses. Both 
stand in refutation of the pose of those engineers who 
deliberately reject the opportunity to put artistic qual- 
ities into work that is destined inevitably to be very 
conspicuous. 
True, what is seen from the Charles Eliot Memorial 
Bridge is, in a seitse, more important than what is seen 
of it. Spanning a ravine crossed by the circular path 
that runs around the plateau-like summit of the highest 
point of land on the Atlantic coast from Maine to Mex- 
ico, it gives the sightseer a chance to sit quietly or to 
lean upon the parapet and at the same time to look 
seaward across the wooded heights of the Blue Hill res- 
ervation of the metropolitan park system. The bridge 
is primarily, however, a noble memorial to the oldest 
son of President Eliot of Harvard, who, as landscape 
architect to the metropolitan park commission, first de- 
tected the possibilities of this forest region, “a tract 
.worthy to be a king's domain,” as he expressed it in a 
report, and who personally exerted himself to secure it 
for the benefit of the people of Boston so that it is still, 
as for several years past, the largest city park in Amer- 
ica, and certainly the most diversified topographically. 
The erection of the Charles Eliot memorial bridge 
was made possible by a gift of three thousand dollars 
from a friend of the late architect. A committee, of 
which Charles S. Rackemann was chairman, decided that 
no more appropriate memorial could be created than a 
foot bridge on the summit of the highest hill of the 
range which Eliot saved to the uses of the metropolitan 
community. Work upon the structure was well under 
way during the summer of 1904, but the formal dedica- 
tion did not take place until Oct. 13, 1906. Part of the 
story is told in the inscription of the smooth granite 
tablet set into the back wall of the recess which affords 
a grateful resting place for those who have climbed the 
hill: “This bridge was erected in 1904 in memory of 
Charles Eliot, landscape architect to the Metropolitan 
Park Commission. By ample knowledge, intelligence, 
perseverance and eloquent teaching he created and in- 
spired organizations capable of accomplishing his great 
purpose, the preservation of our historical and beautiful 
places.” 
The Eliot memorial bridge is built from heavy granite 
boulders of the immediate neighborhood — the quarries 
of Quincy are only five miles away. The roughness of 
the trimming is certainly in keeping with the outcrop- 
ping rock about the summit of Blue Hill and with the 
thin covering of scrub oak and hickory on its Appala- 
chian slopes. 
The new West Boston bridge, which has already been 
opened to traffic, though the work on the great granite 
towers is not yet finished, has been hailed as the most 
artistic bridge yet done in America. It is evidently 
destined to be an impressive and monumental part of 
the general scheme of improvement which is converting 
the Back Bay, until now a muddy estuary with unsightly 
mud flats exposed at low tide, into a decorative fresh 
water lake, alive with pleasure craft and surrounded by 
architectural creations. 
The bridge itself is of imposing proportions, about 
half a mile in length, with its sweep culminating in four 
great central towers. The piers and abutments are of 
granite, the arches of steel. The central towers have a 
total height of one hundred and five feet above the mean 
THE NEW WEST BOSTON BRIDGE, BACK BAY, BOSTON, MASS. 
