Montlake Bridge: Seattle's Gothic Bascule Over the Montlake Cut

The Montlake Bridge crosses the Montlake Cut on the Lake Washington Ship Canal. It opened on June 27, 1925. It is a double-leaf bascule bridge, which means two halves of the deck tilt up to let boats through. Its control towers were built in a Gothic style meant to match the nearby University of Washington campus. It was the last of the canal's four bascule bridges to be built, and many consider it the most beautiful. [1]

It took a long time to get. The canal had cut University Boulevard, later Montlake Boulevard, the only road tying nearby neighborhoods directly to the University District. For more than a decade, crossing the 200-foot gap meant a detour of at least five miles. Between 1914 and 1922, Seattle voters turned down bond measures for the bridge five times. One finally passed narrowly on May 8, 1923, but a court ruled it invalid under state law. The next year a new measure passed by a wide margin. Many people credited the university's football team, which had started playing at a stadium just north of the cut in 1920. In the meantime, at least eight pedestrian pontoon bridges were thrown across the cut, seven of them for football games. [1]

The city engineering department, led by J. D. Blackwell, designed the bridge with local architects Edgar Blair, Harlan Thomas and A. H. Albertson. The towers sit on the northwest and southeast corners. Carl Gould Sr., the university architect behind Suzzallo Library, is often credited with the design because the details echo his work. According to HistoryLink, he appears to have played no direct role. [1]

The opening came a month early and drew a few thousand people. A streetcar decorated with flags carried officials across behind the police band. City Council President Bertha Landes, who would become Seattle's first woman mayor a year later, christened the span. It was Prohibition, so the bottle held 'some effervescing fluid.' Her first swing bounced off the steel. The second broke the bottle and splashed her. Mayor Edwin J. Brown compared the bridge to one over the Tiber in Rome. [1]

The city first paid for and ran the bridge. The Washington State Department of Transportation later took it over as part of State Route 513. [1]