MLK Bridge being spiffed up again for 65th birthday

Q. On Saturday, your paper stated “The MLK Bridge was built in 1961.” I seem to recall crossing what was then called the Veterans Bridge in the late 1950s or is my memory on tilt?

A. If your memory is tilting, mine must have plunged into the Mississippi. As soon as I read that, I, too, wondered if summer memories of sweltering in my family’s 1950 Pontiac Chieftain as we patiently waited to hand our 10 or 20 cents to the tollkeeper so we could get to the Highlands amusement park were all a figment of my imagination.

Fortunately, a quick check found that both our minds still intact. What was indeed originally the Veterans Bridge opened in 1951, so it will be celebrating 65 years of dramatic highs and lows next year.

It started off with great promise, of course. For drivers, it provided much-need relief in getting across the river. The Eads (1874), McKinley (1910) and MacArthur (1917) bridges had been built in large part for trains, so a modern bridge for the ever-growing burden of commuter traffic into St. Louis was just what the doctor ordered.

It also gave East St. Louis a financial shot in the arm. Estimating the bridge’s tolls at $1 million in revenue annually, the city sold $9.4 million in bonds to finance the new span.

I’m sure it was an engineering marvel at the time, but, as a boy, I remember harrowing journeys on a bridge with narrow lanes, hills, dips and turns while being surrounded by those claustrophobia-inducing girders. If you came during peak hours, you could be sitting for what seemed hours waiting to snake through the five toll booths. God forbid there be an accident or stall.

Still, it was the best thing available at the time, and East St. Louis profited handsomely, raking in $2.4 million in tolls annually by 1966. But you know what happened next: The newer, wider, smoother — and free — Poplar Street Bridge came along in 1967 to take I-55/70 across the river. Traffic on the Veterans plummeted, dropping nearly 80 percent to about a half million cars in 1972. With no money for repairs, the bridge began to deteriorate. In 1974, East St. Louis defaulted on its payments, eventually leaving bondholders with a 69-cent loss on every dollar they had shelled out to buy the investment. On the bridge itself, outer lanes were closed to keep drivers off crumbling parts of the deck.

Finally, after long negotiations, ownership was transferred on March 30, 1987, to the Illinois Department of Transportation as Bi-State, the city of St. Louis and the St. Clair and Madison county transit district ponied up $4 million to take the bridge off East St. Louis’ hands. As traffic reporters predicted carmageddon, the span was closed in April 1988 for a massive 14-month, $26 million renovation that also removed those traffic-snarling toll booths. Now, I-64 commuters are fuming again as another $16 million improvement project has closed the bridge for the rest of the year.

More deja vu: Many of those who served in the armed forces currently are taking umbrage that the new Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge is often referred to as simply “the Stan Span,” leaving our valiant warriors out of the picture. It’s not the first time that has happened.

In the 1970s, East St. Louis left “Veterans” off entirely when it renamed its bridge after slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Shortly after the state took control, former state Rep. Ron Stephens said he was going to push to rename it the M.L. King-Veterans Bridge.

“By first naming something after them, then having the name removed is a disgrace to their memory,” Stephens said at the time.

The idea went nowhere, so, at the moment, the area’s only bridge dedicated solely to the area’s vets are the twin five-lane Veterans Memorial Bridge structures which opened in 2003 to carry Missouri 364 (the Page Avenue Extension) across the Missouri River into St. Charles County.

Q. Where can I find an an old East St. Louis map from the years 1930-1942? I spent my early childhood growing up there and loving the old city. I’m writing my memories of it for my children.

A. I don’t know how much help a map would be, so I may have an even better idea to help your memoirs. Grab a recent map and take it to the Belleville library, where you’ll find several East St. Louis city directories from the 1930s through the 1960s. Since I doubt street names have changed much, you can look up each street you remember in the city directory and see what was at each address in any particular year. I know when I do that in Belleville city directories, it brings back a flood of memories of stores I used to frequent but are no longer there. The directories are shelved with the high school yearbooks, etc., and the genealogy information on the west wing of the second floor. Happy reminiscing.

Today’s trivia

Who earned a Tony Award nomination for best actor in 1956 for his work in “The Lark,” Jean Anouilh’s Broadway play about Joan of Arc?

Answer to Wednesday’s trivia: In the late 1920s, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) joined forces with the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chain, resulting in RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) Pictures, one of the Big Five movie studios during Hollywood’s Golden Age. You probably don’t remember its first two films — “Syncopation” and “Street Girl” in 1929 — but there’s no forgetting such RKO celluloid classics as “King Kong,” “Citizen Kane” and “Notorious.”

This story was originally published July 22, 2015 at 8:07 AM with the headline "MLK Bridge being spiffed up again for 65th birthday."