The City Planning to Bury the North End Bridge
Tacoma officials move to replace a bridge with a nine-acre park in the gulch.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Tacoma Avenue bridge above the tennis club grounds is to be abandoned and the street turned to the sound and swung around in a circle, going as far west as the alley and then back again to the Tacoma Avenue line. A fill will be made so there will be no bridge at all and all the gulch south of C Street, comprising a great body of nine acres of land, will be given to the city for a park. This is the plan that will be up to the council for approval tonight. It was adopted by the street committee yesterday over the opposition of Councilman Lynn, who even objected to accepting the nine acres of land because it would face on the street and the city might some day have to pay for part of the paving. Charles Drury, one of the principal advocates of the new idea, countered, 'Well, give me the land and I will pay for the paving.' The Tacoma Land Company will give the land to the city for a park, donating all the gulch excepting that part now occupied by the tennis club. The city will have $30,000 by doing away with the bridge.
“It will be full of babies in a few years.”
The tension between public park space and municipal infrastructure costs is a perennial Tacoma debate. While this specific 'gulch' plan sought to trade a bridge for green space, Tacoma continues to grapple with how to utilize its unique topography and ravine systems in a way that serves residents rather than just engineers.
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