Bridging Time: Louisville bridge gets decked out for Christmas

During the Christmas season, the Big 4 Railroad pedestrian bridge in Louisville, Kentucky, becomes more than just a lighted pedestrian bridge. The almost half-mile-long bridge across the Ohio River becomes a dazzling display of twinkling Christmas rays that seem to move along the steel beams in a rhythm that resembles a lighted Christmas tree. "The lights are an incentive for you to come down to the riverfront and celebrate the holiday," said Ashley Smith, director of development for the nonprofit Louisville Waterfront Development organization. "It's an experience you won't soon forget." During the year, the walkway can be lighted in various colors that can be programmed for special events and holidays, but the Christmas design and holiday music brings out visitors in a festive spirit. "We have the bridge illuminated with almost 2,000 programmable LEDs," said Smith. "Each hard-wired LED light has its own computer IP address, and to the eye, the sequence that makes them appear to be moving along is the programming that's being transmitted to each individual light. The bridge looks like it's merrily moving along, but it isn't. It's just the way the lights are programmed." From the bridge's central location in downtown Louisville, hundreds of people can probably look up and see the lights from surrounding streets, homes, stores, highways and sidewalks. But there's nothing like being inside the lights on the pedestrian passage itself. "It's a wonderful walking experience and a spectacular stroll from one end of the bridge to the other," said Smith. Phillips Lighting of New Jersey supplied the energy-efficient color kinetic luminaire LEDs, which were designed and programmed by Vincent Lighting of Northern Kentucky. It took five months for Advanced Electrical Systems of Louisville to install the elaborate system in 2015, which received rave reviews from passers-by during testing. As far back as the 1960s, Louisville had been moving to transform its downtown riverfront into a tourist destination. It took awhile to get rid of the abandoned, rotting buildings, empty warehouses and scrap metal yards that adorned the shoreline. And right in the middle of the blight? The aging, rusting, slowly decomposing Big 4 Railroad Bridge, its railroad and its access taken away years ago. But still, "the Big 4 Bridge has been a big source of fascination and curiosity to Louisville residents for years," Smith said. "People have just naturally been drawn to it, and as a result, it's always been the focal point for any new development along the downtown Ohio River bank." The bridge's history began back in 1888 when the McClintic-Marshall Company of Pittsburgh began building the structure across the Ohio River. It would be the first railroad bridge built in Louisville across the Ohio River. An attached plaque says 42 workers were killed during the bridge construction. The bridge cost $3.5 million (about $120 million in today's dollars) and opened in 1895. It was immediately sold to the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway — also known as the Big 4 Railroad. Increasing railcar weights required a stronger deck, and the bridge you see today was completed in 1929 by the Louisville and Jeffersonville (Indiana) Bridge Company. Shifting rail traffic forced the bridge to close permanently in 1968. Its approaches were removed in 1974, rendering the structure "the bridge to nowhere." The Big 4 Bridge would sit abandoned for almost 40 years. The rebirth of Louisville's river connection began in 1986 when the nonprofit Louisville Waterfront Park organization came in with a multi-year vision for cleaning up the shoreline and making the area a visitor-friendly area. Smith says the Louisville group visited several other cities that had transformed historic railroads and bridges in their communities into tourist attractions, among them the High Line Railroad pedestrian bridge in New York City and the Purple People Bridge in Cincinnati. Louisville's Waterfront Park was designed by Hargreaves Associates, the same landscape architect that contributed to the riverfront development in Chattanooga and its Walnut Street Bridge. The 6-span, Big 4 Railroad Bridge is a beautiful example of historic bridge preservation. The northernmost span is the shortest one at 207 feet long. It's an eight-panel riveted Parker through truss. Because of the state line boundary location in the Ohio River, two-thirds of this particular span is in Indiana, the other third in Kentucky, along with the rest of the bridge. The two spans on the southernmost side of the bridge are 10-panel, riveted Parker through trusses, each of them 338 feet long. The three giant spans in the middle of the river are 16-panel riveted Pennsylvania through trusses, each of them 547 feet long. All of the spans are "fixed," meaning their horizontal and vertical movements are confined to the piers they're connected to. The Big 4 Bridge is lit up for displays all year round, but Christmas is special. The holiday lighting colors are red and green during one cycle, blue and white during another, and also purple and white and any other combination thereof. They can also pixelate at the same time as a Christmas tree would light up. Just as you get used to one, another moves in seemingly to overpower the one you'd been watching. "It's a beacon of festivity in downtown Louisville," said Smith.