70 years ago…

was a very significant year. It was the year of the World’s Fair in New York City.
Lou Gehrig retired from baseball with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), commonly known since then as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Nuclear fission was first accomplished.
Hewlett Packard was formed.
The first Minneapolis Aquatennial occured.
Gandhi began his famous fast.

Hitler invaded Poland, beginning World War II in Europe. The St. Louis, a ship carrying a cargo of 907 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida after already having been turned away from Cuba. Forced to return to Europe, many of its passengers later die in Nazi death camps during the Holocaust.

Siam became Thailand.
La Guardia airport opened in New York City.
CBS television began transmitting.
The National Baseball Hall of Fame opened in Cooperstown, NY

A lot of well-known people were born in 1939:
Bobby Hull, Sal Mineo, Phil Everly, Ray Stevens, Mike Farrell, Paula Prentiss, Neil Sedaka, Marvin Gaye, Francis Ford Coppola, David Frost, Lee Majors, Judy Collins, Dixie Carter, Al Unser, Jackie Stewart, Carl Yastrzemski, Frankie Avalon, Melinda Dillon, Lee Harvey Oswald, Ralph Lauren, John Cleese, Grace Slick, Russell Means, Yaphet Kotto, Tina Turner, John Amos… oh… and me.

1939 is considered THE big year for movies… the list is rather astonishing:
Gone with the Wind
Wizard of Oz
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Four Feathers
Wuthering Heights
Bachelor Mother
Destry Rides Again
Goodbye
Gunga Din
Hound of the Baskervilles
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Women
Beau Geste
The Young Mr. Lincoln
Stagecoach
Of Mice and Men
Only Angels Have Wings
Ninotchka
Juarez
Love Affair
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Another Thin Man
Babes in Arms
Drums Along the Mohawk
Each Dawn I Die
Golden Boy
Intermezzo
Jessie James
The Little Princess
Love Affair

Aside from all those famous movies (now classics)…
Batman and Captain Marvel (SHAZAM) were created. A hell of a year!

Mighty masonry

Despite the annoying inconvenience of living amidst a 4-year construction zone, and my belief that the resulting “major improvement” will only ease 35W traffic for a short time, I have found it fascinating to watch the construction.

I live alongside the infamous 35W/Crosstown highway, a problem area almost since it was built. The east/west Crosstown came first, built as a means to enable traffic to the stockyards in St. Paul. The stockyards is gone, but the trouble began when Interstate 35W was planned, coming into Minneapolis from the south. Freeways cross all the time, but a poor decision was made way back when… to use part of the Crosstown as part of the new 35W. The reason was to qualify for more government money. The result was a stretch of maybe half a mile of jams and confusion as one highway merged into the other and then quickly out again. It also meant that 35W had two big curves… to merge into and out of the Crosstown section. The simplest routes, just staying on 35W or just staying on the Crosstown, both became tricky merges. It became “the bottleneck”.

There were other choices back then, but, gradually, those choices have disappeared as people built around it. Solving the problem has since been proposed and abandoned several times,also complicated by it involving Minneapolis, Richfield, the county, the state, the feds, and many other related groups. Nevertheless, a grand new plan IS being implemented, over 4 years, and I live in the heart of it. The building next to mine was taken, and the new freeway wall is at the end of our lawn now. Traffic is raised far off the ground through here, because of a couple of major streets and railroad tracks.

The freeway right here is built up on earth (as it was before), blocking all north/south traffic except for the two major streets, but the area east of Nicollet Avenue is where the construction gets interesting. The new solution doesn’t take up much more space than the old, but it separates the two freeways better, allowing through traffic to flow without merging together.

The design is spaghetti-like, with many long ramps. In spite of the grand design, it will undoubtedly still result in slowdowns for both freeways… any curve does. To the extent that it makes traffic somewhat faster, it will become a choice for even more drivers, and will inevitably again become “the bottleneck”.

All that negativity aside, the construction project is impressive. Coordinating the placement of workmen, heavy equipment, and resources coming in from subcontractors has to be a mammoth task. Many very large cranes are deployed and redeployed as needed. My favorite part of the complexity is the construction of the elevated roadways. These are built of pre-cast cross-sections, each section making up about 8 to 10 feet of 2-lane roadway. If you haven’t seen such construction before, the photos below will make it understandable.

The long elevated sections of roadway are supported by large vertical columns, placed a considerable distance apart. One at a time, a cross-sectional piece is added atop a column… first on one side, then on the other, etc. Each new piece is pulled tight against the previous ones, under what must be enormous tension. They continue to add pieces to either side, seemingly balanced on the columns, until about a dozen are hanging out on either side, where they, amazingly, meet with the roadway stretching out from the next column.

Most impressive to me is that these elevated sections curve, often in elevation, direction, and banking, which means that each cross-section is built precisely and uniquely for its location.

You can click on the photos to see large versions.

Here are several cross-section pieces waiting to be placed over
Nicollet Avenue. These were placed at night because the crane
blocked the street.


This shows a bare column and another with the
first couple of cross-sections in place.

Here is a closeup of two sections about to meet.

Two long ramps coming together over Nicollet Avenue, from
the north and from the east.

Shows the complex curve of the roadway.

When I look at these constructions, I get the same feeling as when I see an airliner flying over… it doesn’t look like it should be able to do that, but it obviously can.