Johnson Street Bridge
Yesterday I posted about the control shack for the Blue Bridge, otherwise known as the Johnson Street Bridge. The bridge joins downtown Victoria with Vic-West and points beyond such as Esquimalt (map here). Today I document the bridge with pictures that I took just before Christmas. I was in a rush and thought I might go back and take some more, but now realise that is unlikely to happen any time soon. So, you get to share my rather hurried group from 20 minutes of spare time.
The future of the bridge has been a topic of debate, usually heated, for several years now. Its fate was decided recently, and it will be torn down and replaced over the next few years. It is actually two bridges, one for the E&N Railway which has a station just a few metres beyond the bridge in Victoria, and the other for cars and trucks. The rail bridge has recently been declared unsafe and is fixed in the raised position, isolating the station from the rest of the line. Before that a wide sidewalk on the rail bridge had been an integral part of a local cycling network for commuters and recreational users. The bridge was not often used by the train – twice a day or so. The vehicle bridge is still in working order but an unsettling bike ride, and it has a very narrow pedestrian walkway. Both are bascule-type bridges with a large counterweight that helps pivot the other end of the bridge upward to allow marine traffic to pass to and from the inner reaches of the harbour.
I recall reading a number of years ago that the counterweight had at one time a large water reservoir in it that was filled and drained as necessary to compensate for the weight gains and losses arising from saturation or drying of the wooden bridge deck. The wood deck was replaced many years ago and the reservoir no longer needed – I think it was partially filled with a weight of concrete necessary for the new steel deck, but don’t quote me on any of this as it was long ago that I read it and I am too lazy and too rushed to research and confirm. The wikipedia link in my opening paragraph mentions the wooden deck replacement but not the details I have in my head.
I am using a gallery format yet again for the same reasons as yesterday. These photos are more documentary in nature than aesthetic, though when I was editing them I sometimes found a nice crop to make, and saw lots of missed opportunities for interesting compositions. I did attempt to make all the pictures into a square format, but as I did not think of that when shooting, there were several instances where I needed another format to show what I wanted. I had no particular reason for this format other than I thought that it suits many of the angular elements of the bridge.
To complete the documentation of the bridge I would want to take pictures from various vantage points around the harbour and from the west end of the bridge as well as the east end which is the bulk of today’s images. But, I might not bother. There are tens of thousands of pictures of this structure kicking around, many of them better than mine.
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- view down Johnson Street
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- From foot of Johnson Street
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- from foot of Johnson Street
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- bridge approaches
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- bridge from Wharf Street
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- sidewalk and control shack
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- counterweight detail
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- counterweight rail
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- gear detail
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- girder detail
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- maintenance room
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- raised walkway, rail bridge
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- girder details
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- maintenance room detail
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- girder detail
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- girder detail
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- control shack window
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- sidewalk railing
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- girder detail raised rail bridge
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- staircase detail
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- stair well detail
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- maintenance room detail
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- girder detail
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- girder detail
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- girders on raised rail bridge
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- bridge deck reflections
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- bridge deck reflections 2
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- bridge deck reflections 3
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burnt embers 
Wow, I obviously knew the bridge was in bad shape but until I saw your detailed images of some of the girders and spans, I didn’t know it was deteriorating so badly! I guess it’s good they are going to replace this for safety’s sake, but man… it’s such a beautiful structure that leaves me heartbroken to know it’s days are numbered. I rather love this series and think you’ve done a smash-up job of documenting it for future, my friend, I tip my hat to you!
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Bad shape, but perfect for HDR Toad. I hope you get out there and do some shots. Thanks for your comments, you make me smile 🙂
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Great photos Ehpem, it’s wonderful that you have documented this. There aren’t too many bridges of this type around anymore.
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Thanks David – documentation is an important aspect of photography and one that I used to do a lot of through work. I have been shying away from it in my explorations of photography as it does not seem so interesting any more, but I think I have already learned things that will make me better at documentation shots as well.
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What a blast from the past this is for me, ehpem! I grew up in Victoria. My father’s office/warehouse was in Vic West, and to get to it you had the choice of either the Johnson Street bridge or the newer Bay Street Bridge – both led to his building (which is still there, I’m pleased to say) Our route varied according to the circumstances, but I can safely say I’ve travelled the Johnston St. bridge at the very least, many hundreds of times! The bridge was featured in the title of a book compiled by the Esquimalt Silver Threads Writers Group (Beyond the Blue Bridge – Stories from Esquimalt, 1990). My dad wrote one of the stories in this rather obscure publication, about a chance encounter he had in the 1930s with an elderly man who told him of having been “shanghied” from a pub in Esquimalt (about 1901) when he was drunk, to serve as an unwitting crew member aboard a sailing ship – apparently something that happened often in Esquimalt pubs at that time. It was the wild west across the Blue Bridge, apparently! Thanks for the photos & article, I enjoyed them.
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Hi Laurie – thanks so much for adding that story – there are so many of these stories wrapped up in bridges, and this one has been here long enough to accrue a deep patina of tales. It would be an interesting project to collate a bunch of them, maybe someone is doing that with its upcoming demise.
In the previous location for my office I cycled across this bridge and onto the Galloping Goose Trail. I did that for 2 or 3 years so I too have crossed this bridge hundreds of times, on two wheels, not to mention all the other times I have crossed it. Thank goodness I was not pressed into service aboard a sailing ship when I ventured into Esquimalt, that would have been very disruptive! Great story – the man your father talked to must have been one of the last to have that experience.
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So many intriguing graphic shots with glorious colour and texture. I love the complex shapes simplified through your views.
Too bad it will disappear…
I hope the replacement is just as monumental.
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Thank you Karen. I have hopes for the replacement as well, but they dim every time I hear the rhetoric around the issue. It is more and more likely to be something that is plain and uncontroversial and thus boring.
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I like the way that you have dissected its bones, and especially enjoyed the reflections. I also am fascinated by the architecture of bridges. On a trip to France and Germany I made a special effort to see the Garden of Two Banks (Jardin des Deux Rives), which is a stunning bridge that joins Strasbourg, France, and Keil, Germany. It not only is stunning in design, but each side of the river is planted with a gorgeous array of flowers and grasses.This pedestrian bridge and its surroundings sing with aesthetics. I’ve written about that very day when I came face-to-face with this unusual collaboration between two countries.Thanks, Sally
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Hi Sally – that link did not work so I removed it. Feel free to post it again. The broken link might be why your post went to the spam folder.
Thanks for your comment. There are a lot of fantastic bridges in Europe, some of them old, some of them modern. It seems that most of the bridges around my part of the world tend towards the utilitarian side of the design spectrum.
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These are awesome structures – I have a plan in the back of my mind to go on a tour of the Rideau locks and try and hopefully catch each one (at some point over the summer) in operation.
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Marcel – I look forward to seeing those pictures. Sounds like a good motorcycle tour! Or perhaps you could get a boat’s-eye-view of the locks from the water.
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I love the had engineering at play here. The photos do it a great justice.I think we are very lucky in my country as there seems to have been a real effort to build controversial/interesting structures that tend to stir debate. Love them or hate them it has the masses discussing art, engineering and aesthetics.
Another wonderful and interesting post ehpem…
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Hi and thanks for your kind words. I lived in London for 4 years in the late 80’s during a building boom and everyone was talking about the buildings. It was a wonderfully stimulating environment. It seems to have got even more so since then. Victoria is too much of a small town for that kind of structure to appear here – the politicians are not sufficiently insulated by sheer weight in numbers, and sufficient support for risk of this kind. You can’t imagine the furore that can rise over a pretty plain bit of street sculpture. That is the scale at which we are going to get these kinds of controversies I fear. However, the Royal BC Museum is working up to a rebuild so maybe they can do something inspiring. That task might be helped by yesterday’s announcement that they hired Jack Lohman as their new CEO who is currently Director of the Museum of London – maybe he will bring both vision and persuasive abilities to allow a real landmark to be constructed.
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Great photo essay of Victoria landmark! Among other things it shows that steel left to deterorate is good only for the scrap yard. Bridges with proper maintenance, as shown elsewhere in the world, last for centuries. I Look forward to seeing the pics on computer rather than phone.
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Thanks Joseph. You are right – maintenance is the key. The engineers say it is too far gone, but they tend to be extremely conservative (and who can blame then really) and many a heritage structure has gone missing due to an engineering report. I just wish that there had been sufficient vision to put in a striking new structure that we could all love or hate but which stirred up peoples feelings and opinions and made us talk about it and allowed many to get attached. Victoria lacks interesting new structures.
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