Known as the Old Colony Railroad Bridge, the Scherzer design rolling lift bridge dates to 1898. With the decline of passenger rail service following the Second World War, only one of the three drawbridges remained in use. All were demolished by 1988, replaced by a fixed span across the channel. A preserved fragment of the bridge by artist Ross Miller serves as a monument in the park to the area’s industrial past. Behind the sculpture, trains enter Boston’s South Station.
Old Colony Bridge
"From childhood in Chicago to high school in Grand Rapids, Mich., and at art school in Chicago to Boston, I was drawn to trains and railroad bridges. However, it was the railroad bridge behind South Station in Boston I found the most fascinating. I began drawing and painting it and discovered other artists shared a similar fascination with its complicated construction and huge I-beam forms.
Carrying many tracks, it required the elaborate system of triple drawbridges set obliquely in an elaborate structure to carry south-bound trains across the Fort Point shipping channel. In 1953, destruction had just begun towards removal of the whole structure. When it became clear that the structure was doomed to be destroyed in connection with the building of the Mass Turnpike extension, many of us artist[s] put together an exhibition of our works describing this wonderful steel structure. Nonetheless is was still demolished!
This painting was my largest of many works, painted over a period of years, the culmination of the many sketches, watercolors[,] and drawings. Still the fascination remains, and I have seldom found a subject with as much in the way of variety of shapes, structure, dynamic form, and articulation of light and shade."
