The Jacques Cartier is a rather winding bridge. First of all, it was necessary to for it to curve over Ile Ste-Hélène, in order to avoid placing the stone piers in parts of the river with particularly strong current. A second bend was built just as the bridge crossed onto Montreal island, in order to align the traffic with Montreal’s North-South streets.
The bridge was initially designed to merge onto rue de Bordeaux, one block west of De Lorimier. But the owner of a soap factory on De Lorimier near De Maisonneuve refused to be expropriated to make way for the construction. Therefore, a third bend, pictured above, was engineered to allow the bridge to skirt his property. This is the part of the bridge that spans Sainte-Catherine street.
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Read about this in the (only) book I found about the Sainte-Marie neighbourhood but there was no telling how this person was able to NOT be expropriated as I thought it was always mandatory. This guy must have made some serious soap to have kind of pull. If anyone knows how, I would love to know…
Indeed, Eric, it would be fascinating to know how this guy pulled that off. I’m guessing the city had some major muscle to flex when the bridge was built (as with any other construction project, i.e. SRC-CBC tower, Griffintown, the list goes on…) so it’s completely unlikely that they had to bend the bridge to avoid the soap factory. Wonder what “really happened”…
On a side note, isn’t that the bend that was angled up a few years back (when they were renovating the bridge) in order to make it safer and easier to maneuver when driving onto it? Or is that the bend on the opposite side?
Check out this photo set from atop the bridge. Pretty amazing stuff.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/guillaumepelletier/sets/72157608178317645/
Fray, I think the bend that was reconfigured was the first one, over Viger. I seem to recall talk in the media about fixing the “courbe Craig,” and Craig was the former name for Viger, so it would fit.
L’édifice Familex n’a pas été exproprié parce qu’ils ont tout simplement oublié de le faire dans le délai imparti… C’est tout.
Mais ç’aurait été moins con d’exproprier des terrains en diagonale pour que le pont reste droit. Combien de morts sont dùs à cette courbe impromptue? D’habitude, les ponts sont construits droits, car la ligne droite est le chemin le plus court…
The Barsalou soap factory didn’t budge and is responsible for that last bend above Ste-Catherine Street in your picture. How the owner managed to resist is still a mystery. The sharp “courbe de la mort” above Notre-Dame / Viger was designed as such, as you note, but is often mistakenly attributed to Barsalou.
…donc ceci a donner la chance du fabricant de dire “non” vu qu’ils n’ont pas fait leur travail/paperwork en temps? L’histore m’intrigue et peut-etre je vais faire un peu plus de recherche pour mon blog.
Some of the biggest jobs caused by the construction of the St Lawrence Seaway were the modification of in-place bridges.
The Southern approach to Pont Jacques Cartier had to be raised significantly to allow ships to pass beneath once the Seaway was in use, all this work being done without intrrupting traffic flow.
They had to construct a completely separate second bridge for road and railway at Victoria Bridge in a loop upstream fron the first.
Pont Champlain was constructed high enough when being built, and it is one of the last bridges constructed in steel.
At Pont Mercier they had to demolish the old gently-sloping South approach while the present day spagetti work was installed.
This view from a CIL Handbook shows the demolition of the South approach, Pont Mercier, using strategically-placed explosive charges.
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b61/SDR_North/CILHandbook.jpg
The ‘Blaster’ can be seen crouching by the left rear wheel of the Euclid Dump Truck.
The channel-to-be can be seen in the foreground.
The CPR Bridge from LaSalle to-then Caughnawaga can be seen above left.
The temporary wooden trestle work supporting the two traffic lanes can be seen at the South end of the standing bridge, the trestle work led traffic sharply upstream onto a temporary precipitous rock fill whilst the new approaches were be constructed.
Once, at the South end of the spans being demolished, there was a three-way traffic circle, the cause of much motoring grief on busy Sunday evenings, which led East to highway 9C thru St Constant to Highway 9 to the States, and West thru a tunnel under the CPR into Caughnawaga proper, then to Chateauguay, Beauharnois and the booming metropolis of Cazaville down by the US Border.
The third leg of the much-hated traffic circle led North onto Pont Mercier.
( Other VERY popular traffic circles at the time could also be found at Decarie and Cote De Liesse and at Dorval and 2-17. )
The second angled-downstream bridge at Pont Mercier was completed in 1961.
Craig street is now Saint-Antoine, not Viger