From Preservation Online, the online magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation

www.preservationonline.org

Dear Preservation 911,

The University Avenue Bridge in Lowell, Mass., is slated for demolition.  It is best known for its association with novelist Jack Kerouac who frequently used the span traveling in Lowell's Franco-American neighborhoods. The state department of transportation plans to replace it with a new bridge nearby.

One night while returning home with his mother, he witnessed the death of a man carrying a watermelon. The "watermelon man incident" is given a chapter in is auto-biographical novel Dr. Sax.  Since this is one of Kerouac's more enduring images, perhaps the span should become a National Literary Site, in the way that Henry David Thoreau's Walden Pond and Nathaniel Hawthorne's House of Seven Gables have become. Both are also in Massachusetts.

Beyond the literary connections, the University Avenue Bridge provides an excellent vantage point to view the rapids of the Merrimack River.  It is this view on dark, moonlit nights that so inspired Kerouac.

The bridge was built during the Gilded Age, in the 1890s at the height of Lowell's industrial might. It is a pin-connected deck truss. It is 486 feet long. Its names include the Moody Street Bridge, the Textile Bridge, and the Textile Institute Bridge.

We hope to preserve the existing span as a public space and pedestrian-bicycle route.  One model that inspires us is Shelburne Fall's famous Bridge of Flowers. The organization model we hope to emulate is the Friends of the Schell Bridge. They are hoping to save a similar size bridge in Northfield, Ma. We hope to succeed in this endeavor, following the precedent set by the preservation of Boston's Old Northern Avenue Bridge, also targeted to be razed.

For those interested in helping us, please contact the Friends of Jack's Bridge at savejacksbridge@hotmail.com.

Sincerely,

Steve Lindsey

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