BRIDGE TO NOWHERE

CORRECTION: The original version of this story misstated the India Point Railroad Bridge's train line.

The view from the East Providence Yacht Club on Pier Road could be really nice.

Just imagine: The sun setting over the confluence of the Seekonk and Providence rivers, the capital city skyline in the distance, even, from some angles, the upper reaches of the Superman building.

There’s just one thing in the way: half of a rusty bridge to nowhere. The India Point Railroad Bridge is just sort of sitting there, not doing anything except aggravating people who want to develop the East Providence waterfront. From the barstools inside the yacht club, the bartender will fill your drinks, but the bridge is what fills the eye.

If city officials in East Providence get their way, that will soon (by governmental standards) change: They’re asking for federal help removing what remains of the bridge, which once connected India Point Park in Providence to East Providence, just south of the Washington Bridge.

And help, according to the feds, is on the way. Advocates say removing the bridge would help local businesses like the yacht club and the long-neglected East Providence waterfront.

“We’re trying to develop the waterfront,” said East Providence Councilman and yacht club member Bob Rodericks, “but people can’t get here.”

Decades have passed since the federal government removed half the bridge, leaving the rest of it sitting there in the water, a rusting symbol of a job halfway done and of a bygone industrial economy. Decades more have gone by since trains actually crossed the span, originally built as part of the Boston and Providence Railroad.

Now, the economy is shifting — has shifted — from the smokestacks of yesteryear to the arts and entertainment of today. But the vestiges of the former are getting in the way of the latter.

“People didn’t seem to appreciate the waterfront until recently,” Rodericks said.

To that end, the East Providence City Council over the summer passed a resolution asking the state’s federal congressional delegation for help in removing the bridge.

And already, the Army Corps of Engineers says it has the money in the fiscal year 2020 budget for an environmental review and design to remove it. That doesn’t include costs of the actual demolition, and it’s impossible to say how soon that would take place.

If the last time they took down part of the bridge is any indication, it could be awhile yet.

Congress authorized funding to remove the India Point Railroad Bridge in 1986, and then again in 1996. The work began in the early 2000s, and was completed in 2002, at a cost of $490,000 (a sunken tugboat nearby was also removed).

But the money only covered removing the central span, which, when it was in use, swung laterally open and closed on a pivot to let boats through, the Army Corps of Engineers said. The money didn’t include removal of the landward section of the bridge. So there it sits.

As part of the older project, though, the Army Corps took ownership of the rest of the bridge, so the project to remove it will be 100% federal, New England district spokesman Timothy Dugan said.

Rusty old bridges in Rhode Island waterways can pose more than just navigation hazards: They can also prompt backlash from people who want to keep them for sentimental reasons.

Take the Crook Point Bascule Bridge in Providence.

Please.

Like the India Point Railroad Bridge, the Crook Point bridge connects Providence and East Providence across the Seekonk River. It’s also perpetually in the open position. Except it sticks up vertically, rising out of the water like an ersatz monument.

The state Department of Transportation authorized funding to demolish it in a few years. But it is a signal part of the Providence skyline, featured on T-shirts and coffee mugs. Efforts to remove it have drawn backlash, and the city of Providence is offering to take it over to preserve it.

For the record, India Point Railroad Bridge is a different structure entirely; it’s horizontal, not vertical, depriving it of the Crook Point Bascule Bridge’s strange charm. Will the same thing happen in East Providence? Rodericks, the councilman, doesn’t think so.

“Look at this eyesore,” he said, pointing at the eyesore during a visit on a windy Thursday with The Journal.

Yacht club co-owner Mikel Perry’s first idea was actually to keep the bridge there. He would take control of it, put some Plexiglass down and have a little platform for people to hang out and drink in an unusual, and very on-brand for Rhode Island, place. It would match with the off-beat theme at the yacht club. The bar is decorated by a sign that says “BAR,” except it’s upside down, and has a clock whose numbers go counter-clockwise (the 12 is followed, to the right, by 11, and 10, and so on).

But authorities told Perry that the bridge was unsafe for people to go on.

“If it’s unsafe,” said Rodericks, “get it out of here.”

The yacht club has long been in Perry’s family, but he’s still willing to get rid of something that’s been in his line of sight for decades.

“A little bit of me would miss it,” Perry said as he stood outside on the patio. “But the view would be so much better.”

“Not me,” Rodericks interjected. “Get it out of here.”

The first mention of the India Point Railroad Bridge in these pages was in the ‘60s. The 1860s, to be exact.

“RAILROAD ACCIDENT — Between three and four o’clock Monday afternoon, as William Robbins was standing on the India Point railroad bridge looking at the workmen engaged in driving piles, he was struck by the locomotive of a passing train, and knocked down in such a position that the first car ran over his foot and crushed it, and also broke his right collar bone and fractured one of his ribs. His injuries received skillful attention from Dr. Harris.”

The bridge dates to 1835, when it was a covered bridge was built during the Jackson administration. Over the years it was improved and replaced, with the version that’s there today dating to about the early 1900s.

The bridge made several more appearances in The Journal, like a 1887 story headlined “the horse that dashed over the bridge,” which went on to describe “the horse that made such a wild dash” over the structure. People proposed letting cars pass along it; other people lit fires of suspicious origin upon it; and then, in the later years, as it slouched into disuse, others climbed atop it to furtively drink beers or throw rocks.

It could soon be no more. Instead boats would be able to pull right up to the yacht club, or continue to putter up the Seekonk River more easily. The yacht club could increase the number of slips it uses, and boats would be able to take a more direct route.

And East Providence, its leaders say, could move forward.

“People become nostalgic with things,” Mayor Bob DaSilva said, “but the greater good is to remove it and have a safer waterway.”

bamaral@providencejournal.com

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On Twitter: @bamaral44