| Harvard Bridge |
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| massachusetts institute of technology | |
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| bridges completed in 1891 | |
The Harvard Bridge (also known locally as the "M.I.T. bridge" or the "Mass. Ave. bridge") carries Massachusetts Avenue ( Route 2A ) from Back Bay , Boston to Cambridge . It is the longest bridge over the Charles River . HISTORY Idiosyncratic bridge length measurement The campus of the Massachusetts Institute Of Technology (M.I.T.) is on the Cambridge side, and many M.I.T. Fraternities are in Boston. Crossing pedestrians are reminded by length markers painted at 10-smoot intervals by MIT fraternity brothers that the bridge is 364.4 Smoot s and one ear long. In 1958, members of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity measured the bridge by carrying or dragging the shortest pledge that year, Oliver Smoot , purportedly end over end.''This Month in M.I.T. History'', "The Tech", volume 119, number 49 (Oliver should not be confused with his cousin, fellow M.I.T. alumnus and Nobel Laureate George Smoot .) The marks are repainted twice each year by members of the fraternity. {Link without Title} Given that Mr. Smoot is five feet seven inches (~170.2 cm) tall, measuring the bridge from the zero smoot mark yields a bridge length of about 620 m. Other sources give the length of the bridge as approximately 660 m, but that appears to pertain to the roadway rather than the sidewalk on which the marks are inscribed. Reconstruction After the failure of the Mianus River Bridge in 1983 , the Harvard Bridge was shut down for inspection due to being of similar construction. Redesign and bidding kept the bridge closed and apparently inactive for two years, after which reconstruction began. Half the bridge opened around 1987 with the remaining half opening in 1989 . TRIVIA Harry Houdini performed one of his "well known escapes" from this bridge on May 1 , 1908 , according to a marker at the south-east end of the bridge. Naming legend According to M.I.T. legend, the bridge is so named, despite the fact that it is nearer to M.I.T. than to Harvard , because when it was originally constructed the state offered to name it after the Cambridge school that was most deserving. Harvard argued that their contribution to education was well-known, and thus they deserved the name. M.I.T. concurred, having analyzed the bridge and found it structurally unsound (and thus more deserving of the Harvard name than the M.I.T. name). Subsequently the bridge collapsed after five years of construction and was rebuilt, confirming the M.I.T. engineers' fears. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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