South Center Street (Cass Avenue) Bridge in Bay City's early years. (Bay-Journal.com) CASS AVENUE BRIDGE: Bay City Growth Hampered by Loss of South End Span?
February 15, 2018
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As a boy traveling the Saginaw River by sailboat with my stepfather in the late 1940s, one of my jobs was to blow a horn for bridges to open.
In the old maritime communication, that was a long toot, two short toots and another long one. Today just a long and a short are used to signal for a bridge opening.
It became an article of faith that the bridgetenders at Belinda and Cass would not be at their posts; they were imbibing at nearby taverns. So the horn blowing was futility.
Capt. Howard Smith's only recourse in those cases was to bring the 36-foot long sailboat to the riverbank and have me run up to the nearest tavern. Strikes me it was Gardner's at 605 Belinda and the Club 709 on Hotchkiss for Cass. Only one word of alert was necessary on entering the smoky booze dens: "Bridgetender!"
The expected answer came quickly: "Yup, be right there." The malingering city servant climbed off the bar stool and quickly returned to his post. So then we could proceed south toward Stender's Yacht Service where the sleek schooner was put up for the winter; or in the spring we could head the ship for its berth at the Saginaw Bay Yacht Club. Thankfully we had an outboard motor to eliminate the need for tacking incessantly on the river.
At Third Street, the tender was invariably on duty and, of course, there was no Veterans Memorial Bridge at that time. Hey, one out of three ain't bad!
So that experience stuck with me all these years. We never resented having to seek out the boondoggling tender and the tippler rarely made an apology for his lack of attention to duty; it was just the way it was in those days.
In the 1950s, the Cass Avenue Bridge, formerly the South Center Street Bridge, was removed. Costs of repair had grown too high for city fathers to stomach, apparently.
But did the fact that we no longer had a connection from South Bay City to Brooks in Frankenlust Township hamper growth of those areas of the city? I have often thought that, especially regarding the west side where lots of vacant land could have been used for homes and industries -- had we the money to support another bridge, of course.
A bridge at Cass could have allowed traffic from River Road to reach West Side Saginaw Road, and now I-75, without tearing up the city streets at substantial cost to taxpayers.
Vestiges of the old Village of Portsmouth remain, largely unknown and unrecognized, near what is now the Cass Avenue Boat Launch. The Astor House, Cass at Harrison, its multiple second story windows attesting to the vitality of bygone days, sits moldering, used as a warehouse lo these many years. Unless you knew the history, you would probably think nothing of it.
The Astor House was opened with great fanfare Nov. 1, 1902. However, the center of growth had shifted to the north and the Campbell House, Fraser House and Other hostelries prospered while the Portsmouth Village slowly died on the vine, especially after the demise of the North American Chemical Company (the Alkali) in 1928.
According to authoritarian sources who wish to remain anonymous, the Astor House actually dated to 1873, so the 1902 grand opening must have been a renovation. The building supposedly was was gone by 1931. That creates a mystery about the multi-windowed structure at Cass and Harrison that the Sage of my acquaintance contends was the Hanson-Ward Veneer Mill. Leaving us to wonder: why all the windows in a factory?
The Village of Portsmouth was the dream of Judge Albert Miller. "He purchased land from the Tromble brothers which extended on either side of Cass Avenue and faced the river," wrote Geoerge E. Butterfield in his 1918 edition of "Bay County Past and Present," updated by the Bay City Board of Education in 1957. "He laid out his 'paper village' and went to Detroit to attempt to sell his lots. The first steam sawmill was erected there to serve the growing population that never appeared -- few sharing Judge Miller's vision of Portsmouth as a metropolis.
Lumber mills like John McGraw's near 44th Street and the Bousfield Mill on the river kept Portsmouth busy enough to require building a bridge at South Center Street. The Milwaukee Bridge and Iron Works erected the span at a cost of $14,850 in 1890.
The Cass Avenue Bridge lasted until the early 1950s when, in my case at least, it became only part of the memory store of an adventuresome boyhood on the river.
The moral of the story, as this corner sees it, is that allocation of city dollars for repairs of the Cass Avenue Bridge in the 1950s may have paid big dividends in additional development, and tax dollars, plus save on street repairs because of heavy traffic through the city.
When Cass Avenue went down, that left only Third Street and Belinda bridges, no doubt hampering city growth until the Veterans Bridge was erected in 1964 and Independence Bridge in 1976.
With the kind of thinking that would eliminate one of our four bridges we may be heading back to the days when ferry boats were required to cross the river.
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jammaxs Says:
On October 08, 2018
at 09:23 PM
Dave very interesting and outstanding over all. But, only one mistake, Vets Bridge was open before 1964. I believe it was opened in 1957 or there about. I remember going over the Vets Bridge back in 1963 on my families way to church. But, outside of that I total agree with the point you were making in the story.
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tdeming28 Says:
On February 12, 2019
at 05:45 PM
no 44th street
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Dave Rogers |
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