PITTSBURGH — If your most private, irrational fear is crossing bridges, you don't belong here. A drive for the view from Mount Washington, a trip to the store, your commute — even a walk to the ballpark — they all involve crossing some span.
This town is a gephyrophobic's worst nightmare.
More so than just about any place in the world, Pittsburgh has bridges: black railway trestles, spans with soaring steel arches, concrete roadways stretching across any of a number of rivers. Suspension spans, old box and girders, trussed arches and cantilevers — the city's array of bridgework is impressive.
(Gephyrophobic? That's an individual with a fear of crossing a bridge over water.)
Go to the top of Mount Washington and look down on the city, taking in the skyline, the new sports stadiums, the rivers winding off toward the hills.
Then count the bridges: There are at least 19 in view on a good day, from the grand arch across the Ohio at McKees Rocks to the "Three Sisters" — nearly identical eye-bar suspension bridges linking downtown with the North Side — to the double lens shapes of the Smithfield Street Bridge, a shimmering blue wave rolling over the Monongahela.
"Bridges are a fascinating kind of structure for most people," says Cathy McCollom, operations director for the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. "And if you stand on Mount Washington, you can see bridge after bridge after bridge."
With 1,945 bridges in Allegheny County and 377 bridges in the city proper, Pittsburgh likes to boast of having more spans than any city in the world, except Venice, Italy. And it's true that, even though Pittsburgh doesn't have any exceedingly long or famous crossings, enthusiasts devote Web pages to local bridges, and that an international bridge conference is held here each year.
Seventy bucks will even get you on the Landmarks Foundation's annual cruise to see river bridges from down below, with a lecture on how they were built.
But without a signature span, a Golden Gate, a Brooklyn, a Ponte Vecchio, Pittsburgh's bridges can be seen as not being seen much at all, as an afterthought, all function, no form. There is peeling paint on many of the structures; graffiti on others.
Walter Kidney, an architectural historian who wrote a book on Pittsburgh's bridges two years ago, said it seems few people come to the city looking for bridges, even though, to his mind, it may be unrivaled in the diversity of its spans.
"There are so many from one viewpoint," said McCollom. "All of that can serve to be an attraction."
Even at their most simple, bridges are gaudy machines, defying gravity and good sense. Granted, a discussion of compression, arches and tensile strengths can cure insomnia. But just by looking around, you can become a bit of a bridge nut in Pittsburgh.
There's the 16th Street Bridge, for instance, with its urbane trio of steel trussed arches and stone pillars topped with bronze sculptures of sea horses and stately spheres. In nearby McKees Rocks, the bridge named after the town is reminiscent of New York's Hell Gate Bridge, with its tapering trussed arch and mishmash of cantilever deck trusses and crescent arches.
The Smithfield Street Bridge downtown, from Gustav Lindenthal's lens-shaped design in the 1880s, is built of gently curving eye-beams. It's still considered by many the most aesthetically pleasing span in the city, with its steel portals and ornamentation.
Then there are the more modern-looking bridges linking river shores and hillsides, with the supporting structure all underneath, like the towering Westinghouse Bridge. Its graceful concrete arches are hidden from view, spanning Turtle Creek Valley. Driving across, you suddenly seem to be suspended in mid-air.
Then there is the tiny Windgap suspension bridge, spanning Chartiers Creek and almost abandoned. With wire rope hung over steel towers and a wooden deck crossing the stream, it seems a lot for a footbridge — and swings stiffly when you rock back and forth on the flooring.
Kidney said Pittsburgh has no moveable bridges — no drawbridges or rotating spans — but just about everything else is represented here.
The reason for all the bridges, by the way, is the topography of southwestern Pennsylvania. To navigate and expand over and around rivers and streams, mountains and sharp-dropping valleys, manmade works were called for. Tunnels burrow through mountains; trolley cars cling to rails crawling up steep inclines.
And bridges and roads connect the pieces.
"It's the combination of urban density and this topography in a small area," said Bruce Cridlebaugh, an enthusiast who maintains a Web site on Pittsburgh's bridges. "We pretty much have something of everything here. I don't know if there's anywhere else you could say that."
But could Pittsburgh, a place known best for its former steel mills, ever be thought of as a rival to Venice, even with all its bridges?
Unlikely — but that doesn't mean there aren't people in the city who want to put all these spans to good use.
A recent suggestion was floated to replace the "Aztec gold" paint on most of the bridges with a wide array of bright colors, including "purple ice," "perfect peach" and "candied yam."
McCollom admits, there were many in the region who didn't find the idea too appetizing.
"That offended their Pittsburgh souls, to have a bridge painted 'pretty in pink,' " she said, adding that the paint proposal was floated only to get people talking about bridges.
"It's a very significant asset," she says. "We should build on our strengths."