Selby Avenue Bridge

St. Paul, Minnesota
Completed 1993

In 1992, I got a phone call from City of Saint Paul engineers. The 100-year-old Selby Avenue Bridge would soon be demolished and they hoped to replace it with “something more than a bump in the road.” Would you,” they asked me, “help us to design the detailing for the new bridge?”

The materials of the original Shortline overpass were stone, steel, and wood. The 1,100-foot span of our new bridge is built of concrete and steel, with my designs for its railing and surface treatments linked to the structure and ornament of the former bridge. The rusticated pattern of its concrete abutments closely follows the dimensions of cut-limestone blocks for the original structure. Where the deck begins, the steel railings double in scale to embrace the surrounding cityscape. Beneath the deck a thirty-inch-tall, continuous band of former railway suggests the rhythmic speed of passing trains and wraps the Selby Avenue Bridge with an unbroken ribbon of local history.