Folio Weekly
September 8, 1998

Arch Rivalry
By Anne Schindler

St. Augustine’s Bridge of Lions won’t die of old age - but it might be killed by ignorance.

This was no ordinary tea part. The six dozen women who gathered on the tiny triangle of St. Augustine lawn were, in fact, just one step away from chaining themselves to the city gates in protest.

While the spectacle might have helped their demonstration that turn-of-the-century afternoon, the women decorously refrained. After all, these weren’t ordinary rabble rousers - they were respectable wives of respectable local businessmen. As such, they had a certain obligation to avoid bawdy behavior - even if it would have served the greater good.

This nod to Emily Post did not deter the women from their mission, however - they simply found a more civilized path of protest. Instead of chaining themselves to the St. Augustine’s city gates, they served tea in front of the looming coquina stanchions, effectively blocking the historic structures from construction crews. While the women nibbled on tea cookies and made polite conversation, baffled workmen stood around in confusion before finally giving up and going home.

Everyone has a bit of ancient history they’d just as soon forget. Even St. Augustine - a city that has traded on its past for more than 400 years - is ashamed of some things.

What is surprising is not that the city has something to hide, but how it selects its secrets. In many cases real tragedies - indignities visited upon Native Americans and blacks, swindling carpetbaggers, corrupt land salesmen - are accepted pieces of the community quilt. Indeed, city leaders tend to promote certain unflattering historical facts, such as the cruel imprisonment of Chief Osceola in the Castillo de San Marcos or the brutal slaughter of French soldiers at Fort Mantanzas. The nation’s oldest city doesn’t split hairs over political correctness.

But not every bit of St. Augustine history is popularized, and some pieces are categorically concealed. Like the time the city nearly turned the verdant lawn around the ancient fort into a retail complex. Or the time officials tried to tear down the historic gates of the city because they didn’t accommodate motorcars. Or the time they considered replacing the St. Augustine Lighthouse beacon with a flashing laser beam. Or the time they tried to turn the old Plaza de la Constitucion auction block into a glassed-in office building.

As one local historian likes to observe, there’s no idea so bad that St. Augustine hasn’t considered it. Unfortunately, the city has done more than consider some bad ideas.

In the late 1950’s, the city ripped out the historic bayfront boulevard and replaced it with a four-lane highway. Like the attempt to tear down the city gates, the bayfront project was touted as the solution to downtown traffic jams. Unlike the gates, however, the move to widen the road was not stopped. Today, it’s nearly impossible to imagine downtown without the broad tongue of tarmac lapping the bayfront. Those who are able to remember try to forget - the contrast is too depressing.

This is not the brand of history the average tourist hears while ensconced in a horse-drawn carriage - and there’s a reason for that. In a town that depends on its past for both millions of tourist dollars and considerable civic pride, destruction of historic artifacts is a source of acute embarrassment. The city takes pride in its history - except when that history involves erasing history.

“People come to this city because of the history,” observes local author and historian David Nolan. "If you destroy the history, then you destroy the appeal of the city."

But if the ravaging of historical monuments is reviled in retrospect, at the time the proposals often seem eminently practical. Why preserve the empty property surrounding the fort when there’s money to be made developing it? Why allow narrow city gates to bottleneck traffic? Why not use modern lighting technology in the lighthouse?

The arguments bear striking resemblance to the current proposal to tear down the Bridge of Lions. The 70-year-old span, which connects downtown St. Augustine to Anastasia Island, has been criticized as out-of-date, inadequate and dangerous. The answer, according to some, is to build a new bridge - a larger, modern bridge that can accommodate more traffic and provide a speedier passage from the island to the mainland.

The push for a bigger, faster bridge is an impulse that seems out of place in the ancient city, especially when modernity is so often hobbled for the sake of tourism. Visitors to St. Augustine ride plodding tour busses, snack on homemade candies and buy wooden spoons whittled by hand. It’s not the kind of pace that sets one whirling into the 21st century.

Nevertheless, new attractions outside the city gates - like the I-95 outlet mall and the World Golf Village - have contributed to a change in the tenor of local tourism, and have brought their own infrastructure demands. Hotels and beachfront rental properties are spreading like crabgrass, fueling a boom in chain restaurants and T-shirt shops. Residential developments, too, are growing at a record clip, contributing even more traffic to already-taxed roads. All of this makes a trip through downtown or over the Bridge of Lions a headache for residents.

Serious questions remain whether a replacement bridge can solve St. Augustine’s gridlock, however. Since the city first considered replacing the bridge in the early 1970s, several approaches have been proposed.

Initially, city leaders advocated building a four-lane, high-rise bridge stretching from the foot of the Castillo de San Marcos to its current landing on Anastasia Island. Though bandied about for several years, the city finally abandoned the notion - due in large part to the strenuous objections of local bridge activists.

Janis Williams, one of the original voices for bridge preservation and part of a core group of activists in the current effort to save the Bridge of Lions, recalls the four-lane high-rise proposition as an episode of surrealistic horror. Absurd as the monolith now seems - as awful as it seemed even then - Williams says, “We had to take it seriously, because everyone was taking it seriously. This was serious business.”

The DOT’s current proposals are less patently offensive than the earlier versions, but bridge advocates still have their work cut out for them. Although the bridge is widely regarded as an integral part of the historic cityscape, it is not, in the minds of some, old enough to warrant preservation. Despite its 1982 placement on the National Register of Historic Places, and its 1997 designation as one of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places, the relative youth of the bridge has made preserving rather than replacing it a tough sell.

The reason for that, Williams says, is partly due to a failure of the local preservation community to convey “historic significance...Not everything that is old is historic. Not everything that is historic is old.” In the case of the Bridge of Lions, which Williams calls “an icon of our city,” the historic value is manifest - regardless of age.

“It’s the most photographed piece of downtown and one of the most important structures in the city,” she says. “It’s worth preserving for tourism reasons alone.”

But Williams, who has helped orchestrate everything from mass mailings to a Bridge of Lions art exhibit, admits time is running out for bridge preservation. Although city officials have been weighing restoration against replacement for nearly 30 years, the issue is now coming to a head. The state Department of Transportation is less than two months away from issuing a preliminary environmental impact statement on the project. Once that has been published, the state Department of Environmental Protection will have 45 days to review it and take public comments. If environmental officials approve the project - and there’s little reason to expect they won’t - the DOT will have the green light to move forward.

And according to DOT project spokesman Bill Henderson, “We need to make a decision pretty soon. Not build [ing] is not an option - there’s not an option not to repair.”

Unfortunately for Williams, Nolan and the rest of the Save Our Bridge committee, the DOT is leaning toward replacement rather than restoration and refurbishment. And despite efforts to rally public support for the historic bridge, DOT appears to be listening primarily to one group - the U.S. Coast Guard.

A proposed new Coast Guard policy requires bridges to have at least 125 feet of horizontal clearance at their base to accommodate boat and barge traffic. The Bridge of Lions’ opening is only 76-feet wide, and fixing the discrepancy would entail tearing down the existing bridge and starting over. Because the size of the draw span would increase proportionately with the width of the base opening, the entire scale of the bridge would have to be ratcheted up. In the end, advocates say, the “new improved” bridge would be a gargantuan failure.

While the DOT says it would try to “recreate the aesthetic” of the current bridge, the replacement option comes with no guarantees.

“Not only [could the new bridge be] ugly, but the one we have is historic,” says Williams. “If we don’t save it, I guarantee in 30 years we’re going to look back and say, ‘What have we done?’”

Almost 100 years after the tea party at the city gates, Theresa Segal is herself considering a trip to the hardware store. “I’m not above chaining myself to the bridge,” says the local artist, a shy smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “I’ll do anything if I think it will help save the bridge.”

Seated on the top floor of a St. Augustine bayfront restaurant, Segal periodically glances over her right shoulder at the graceful Bridge of Lions span. Humming with a steady stream of traffic, flanked by bobbing sailboats, the bridge seems an unlikely setting for human barricades and chained protest. Similarly, Segal seems an unlikely candidate for such a performance.

But the same genetic code that gave Segal her mild brown eyes and pint-sized frame is responsible for the DNA strand that contains a zealot’s passion for preservation. A descendent of the city’s original Minorcan settlers, Segal has both strong ties to local history and a deep commitment to saving the historic cityscape.

In addition to tracing her lineage to the oldest city-dwellers, she can trace her family tree to one of the feistiest preservationists in city history. X.L. Pellicer, Segal’s grandfather, is something of a legend in local historic preservation circles, responsible for financing the restoration of the ancient Tolomato Cemetery, and credited with spearheading the effort to preserve the city’s bayfront.

In her effort to save the Bridge of Lions, Segal has assumed the mantle of responsibility that Pellicer passed on. If the echo of activism has occurred unconsciously, the similarity has not escaped her compatriots. Segal spoke earlier this year before the City Commission, appealing for bridge preservation. And though she recalls the speech with some chagrin (“I could barely speak I was so nervous.”), historian David Nolan congratulated her for carrying on the family tradition.

“He came up to me afterwards and he said, ‘Your grandfather would be very proud of you.’” recalls Segal.

While such comparisons are welcomed, Segal says her participation in the bridge preservation effort has little to do with choice. “I don’t think I could not live with myself -- I could not drive by the bayfront -- if I don’t know I did everything I could to save it,” says Segal.

To date, the effort to save the bridge has been impressive, combining savvy marketing techniques with grassroots enthusiasm. In addition to a slick press package and petition drive, the Save Our Bridge committee has organized benefit concerts, bridge-centered art exhibits, even a lobbying campaign, for which the group distributed stamped postcards of the bridge, pre-addressed to state legislators.

While the group has had some success, Segal concedes the effort has nonetheless been somewhat depressing. Legislators remain frustratingly reluctant to take a position on bridge preservation. U.S. Rep. Tillie Fowler (R-Jacksonville) insists bridge preservation is “a local issue.” State Rep. Doug Wiles (D-St. Augustine) says that he is “still waiting for the facts” from DOT. And, after years of discussion on the topic, locals have become apathetic.

There are pockets of support for replacing the bridge. Though not large, replacement supporters include some heavy hitters, including former mayors Art Runk, Eddie Mussallem, Walter Bugeski and Kenneth Beeson. Known to bridge advocates as “the grumpy old men,” these former legislators coined the chief argument against preserving the span: “I’m older than that bridge -- and I’m not historic.”

In addition to this contingent, some residents are genuinely concerned with the bridge’s structural integrity. Because the span shakes slightly with traffic and when the draw closes, some believe it is unsafe. In fact, DOT officials would close the bridge instantly if it posed any sort of danger. But the department hasn’t exactly gone out of its way to reassure motorists. DOT’s Henderson points out that a structural inventory of the bridge yielded a score of 10 out of a possible 100. The fact that the DOT has prohibited heavy trucks from using the bridge only reinforces fear that the bridge is somehow unsound. The situation, however, is far from dire. DOT engineers admit that the existing supports are solid, in fact, that they will reuse them if the state elects to restore the bridge. Still, this fails to comfort many bridge-a-phobes.

“The [DOT’s] scare tactics work,” says Williams. “I’m sorry for those people [who are scared to cross the bridge], because they miss a beautiful site -- and to live in fear is a terrible thing... But that is no reason to tear it down. It’s safe.”

DOT officials are currently reviewing several bridge proposals, but the various plans boil down to two central alternatives: replace or restore.

The replacement option, which DOT currently favors, would cost $25 million and would entail tearing down the existing bridge and rebuilding it from the ground up. In addition to the two existing lanes of traffic, the replacement bridge would have two 10-foot “breakdown” lanes and wider pedestrian sidewalks. In all, the brand-new bridge would be more than twice as wide as the current span, and at least 8 feet higher. Like the current bridge, it would have a draw span, but the boat opening would be 125 feet wide, compared to the current 76 feet.

Despite its increased size, preservationists contend that a new bridge would not necessarily solve one of the chief complaints about the old bridge -- the frequent draw would give boats only 3 to 4 feet more clearance than the existing bridge. In addition, federal law would require the new bridge to open on demand, as opposed to present guideline of every half-hour.

The restoration option would cost about $20 million and would allow the base of the bridge to remain intact. The upper portion of the bridge would be replaced, including the draw portion, and sidewalks would be widened slightly. But the bridge would remain two lanes. Restoration would include adding handrails and lights that more closely resemble the original wrought iron fixtures. And since the bridge would not constitute a “new” span, it would not have to open on demand.

While the proposals are substantively different, bridge activists say the most important factor may be the label -- whether it is “restored” or “replaced.”

Because a “restored” bridge is not a “new” bridge, it would not have to meet the DOT’s stringent -- and frequently unattractive -- construction codes. Indeed, if the bridge were rebuilt to code, it would look (from a driver’s perspective) like a dwarf version of the State Road 312 bridge to the south of the Bridge of Lions, or (from a boater’s perspective) like the Fuller Warren Bridge in Jacksonville, albeit without the open steel webbing.

In addition to the added height and required breakdown lanes (which would obscure a motorist’s view of the water and most of the city), the proposed DOT design cuts the number of bridge support arches in half. Of those remaining, the center two are transformed from graceful supports to massive concrete edifices, as wide as they are tall. These supports, necessary to house the machinery needed to lift a new, wider span, would affect the most dramatic change in the bridge’s appearance.

Although bridge advocates have been willing to accommodate some of the DOT’s design demands, the 125-foot horizontal clearance rule is the least palatable. Ironically, the wider boat opening has little to do with bridge safety. The Coast Guard recommendation is actually designed to accommodate barge traffic. Though only a small portion of the overall Intracoastal Waterway traffic, the barge business is an influential and moneyed lobby. Backed to a large extent by oil companies that use barges for oil transport, the barge lobby has long pushed for greater Intracoastal access.

Their interest in the Intracoastal is largely due to new environmental laws that prohibit single-hulled barges from transporting oil via ocean waters -- more expensive double-hulled barges are required. Single-hulled barges are still permissible in the Intracoastal Waterway, however, and the route has become a big money saver.

Whether the Intracoastal is an appropriate place for industrial waterway traffic has not been resolved, nor has the desirability of facilitating barge traffic. The Coast Guard has largely focused on the wider span as a safety issue. The fact that the bridge has been hit several times in recent years by barges is offered as evidence of the need to widen the opening. In 1966, however, the Coast Guard installed large moorings north and south of the bridge to allow barges to wait for slack tides before attempting to maneuver through the bridge -- a move that has prevented any subsequent collisions.

Unfortunately, the Coast Guard seems unwilling to compromise on the 125-foot horizontal clearance issue. And if the DOT disregards its recommendation, the Coast Guard has indicated that it will not approve the project.

Clearly, the DOT is unhappy being caught in the middle. As Henderson readily admits, the Bridge of Lions project is the most controversial he’s seen. Nevertheless, he maintains that there is room for compromise. The DOT “wouldn’t build your regular basic DOT bridge,” he insists. “We would try to put something there that looks good, something that’s consistent with the aesthetic of the city.”

Far from comforting bridge advocates, Henderson’s assurances inspire a new set of concerns.

“It frightens me to death,” says Williams, who suspects the DOT would design a concrete span “with a few Spanish doo-dads on it for decoration.”

Besides, she points out, “There is no guarantee of anything [once the project is approved]. All we have is the possible promise of a ‘probable maybe’ [that the new bridge would resemble the old]. Once it’s been approved, all bets are off.”

There’s no rule that says historians can’t have a sense of humor. But for someone who has battled as much ill-conceived “progress” as David Nolan, his unflappable good nature is surprising. Still, the plight of the Bridge of Lions is sobering, even for him.

Standing atop the bridge facing west, Nolan surveys the skyline of the city. Losing the battle would be catastrophic, he says - but losing the view might be worse.

“This is the only spot where you can enter the city and see this,” he says, gesturing at the spires of Flagler College and the tiled roofs of the city’s bayfront homes. A resident of Anastasia Island, Nolan has the privilege of seeing this view almost daily. While he hears the complaints about the traffic backups and long waits for the bridge’s draw, he says such complaints are best answered by pointing to the south, where the very large, very capable SR 312 bridge looms on the horizon. In downtown St. Augustine, there is no room for such a bridge, says Nolan - even if it is outfitted with lions and tile-topped towers. The beauty of the bridge is its scale, its shape and its perfect architectural coordination with the city.

No, he concedes: “it’s not ‘up to code.’ But think about what is up to code.” Rattling off an inventory of St. Augustine’s most commercial corridor, he makes a compelling case for structures in “substandard” condition.

“Nothing in this town worth saving is up to code,” says Nolan. “The fort isn’t up to code, Flagler College isn’t up to code, the Lightner Museum wasn’t built to code.”

With a wry chuckle, Nolan adds, “Take all that stuff down, and the city might be up to code. But who’s going to want to come here?”