Seattle's Ravenna Park Bridge is constructed in 1913.

  • By Priscilla Long
  • Posted 7/23/2008
  • HistoryLink.org Essay 8699
See Additional Media

In 1913, Seattle's Ravenna Park Bridge is constructed. A three-hinged, steel, lattice-arched bridge, it spans a deep ravine in Ravenna Park at 20th Avenue NE. Ravenna Park is a one-half-mile wooded ravine just north of the University District. The comely Ravenna Park bridge is designed by Frank M. Johnson under the direction of Seattle City Engineer Arthur Dimock.

The structure is 354 feet long. It has a 250-foot arch composed of two ribs (curved structural members that support a curved shape or panel) that rise 41 feet over the ravine, and support an 18-foot reinforced concrete roadway. The roadway is today reserved for pedestrian crossings only. Historians Holstine and Hobbs write that the bridge is "one of the finest legacies of Arthur Dimock's tenure as City Engineer"  and that it is the oldest of only two steel lattice-arched spans (p. 159).

Ravenna Park was named by its original owner, W. W. Beck, when he acquired the land in 1889, because the place reminded him of Ravenna, Italy, a seacoast town graced with large pine trees. Other names for the park were Big Tree Park, Ravenna Springs, and Twin Maple Lane. The town of Ravenna was annexed to Seattle in 1907 and the city acquired the park land in 1911.  


Sources:

Craig Holstine and Richard Hobbs, Spanning Washington: Historic Highway Bridges of the Evergreen State (Pullman: WSU Press, 2005), 159; "Ravenna Park," Sherwood Park History Files, Seattle Parks and Recreation Department website (http://www.seattle.gov/PARKS/history/RavennaPk.pdf).


Licensing: This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons license that encourages reproduction with attribution. Credit should be given to both HistoryLink.org and to the author, and sources must be included with any reproduction. Click the icon for more info. Please note that this Creative Commons license applies to text only, and not to images. For more information regarding individual photos or images, please contact the source noted in the image credit.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Major Support for HistoryLink.org Provided By: The State of Washington | Patsy Bullitt Collins | Paul G. Allen Family Foundation | Museum Of History & Industry | 4Culture (King County Lodging Tax Revenue) | City of Seattle | City of Bellevue | City of Tacoma | King County | The Peach Foundation | Microsoft Corporation, Other Public and Private Sponsors and Visitors Like You