New pedestrian bridge rises over Washington Road

Expected to be completed in fall 2010, engineer Christian Menn’s sleek structure will arch over Washington Road, linking the Ellipse Walk to the new chemistry building currently being constructed south of Jadwin Hall. Also due to open next fall, the chemistry building will be an aesthetic complement to the bridge.

The pedestrian bridge and the new chemistry building are two pieces of the University’s 10-year Campus Plan, which has progressed on schedule despite $300 million in project cuts last November.

John Streicker ’64, who donated the money for the bridge in December 2006, said in an e-mail that the new structure “will add an important element of safety to what is now a perilous crossing of Washington Road.”

The site of the bridge’s crossing has a history of safety concerns. In May 2008, University employee Matthew Montondo suffered head trauma after he was struck by a car when crossing Goheen Walk on his bike outside Jadwin Hall. A year before, Frist Campus Center maintenance assistant Theodore Christie sustained minor injuries after a car skidded out of control and struck the Washington Road bus stop.

Plans for the new bridge were released in April 2005, and the project’s early inception prevented it from being cut during the economic downturn. The University, as a policy, does not release costs of construction prior to a project’s completion.

“The critical decisions were made in a very different economic environment,” Streicker explained.

University Architect Ron McCoy GS ’80 said that the project was so far along by the time the economy turned that it would have been illogical for the University to abandon it.

“This was already into construction when the economy turned, and we had to identify projects that we could defer. We could have gone back and stopped it and filled in the construction, but we had already done a lot of construction by that point,” he explained.

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University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt ’96, however, said in an e-mail that ground wasn’t broken for the project until September 2008, when the University was beginning to plan its response to the downturn.

She added, though, “When we announced our decision to postpone elements of our capital plan, we made it clear that we would proceed with elements that already were in the planning and/or construction phase.”

Delaying the project also would have proved difficult as the bridge “is not a stand-alone project, but instead requires significant coordination with other elements of the science complex,” Cliatt explained.

“We of course continue to be dedicated to completing a project that will provide the infrastructure to foster interdisciplinary collaboration between existing and new natural sciences programs. The bridge is both literal and metaphorical in terms of bringing together disciplines in the sciences,” she said.

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In addition to improving safety, the bridge is also intended to link Icahn to the new chemistry building, aiding in the creation of a unified science complex in an effort to further the Tilghman administration’s goal of establishing academic neighborhoods.

“It’s a part of the master plan of the campus,” McCoy said of the bridge. “The history of the campus is one of east-west pathways, so this is the next generation of those walkways that go all the way across campus.”

He added that the development of the new chemistry center also meant that the bridge’s construction had to be delayed for a few years.

“We couldn’t really deliver people to the other side of Washington Road [until recently] because we’d be putting people in the middle of the construction site,” he explained, adding that the idea for a raised bridge “fit with the topography of the site” and was the natural evolution from flat pedestrian paths such as Goheen Walk.

Streicker noted that the bridge’s potential advantages for the campus outweighed its costs.

“Given its benefits to the Princeton community, I think all of us involved in the project — and there are many — believe the Streicker bridge would be a priority in any economic environment,” Streicker said.

McCoy explained that the choice of design style was clear, noting that any architect the University turned to would likely embrace a modern style as opposed to the neo-gothic architecture found elsewhere on campus.

“I would say that most architects are contemporary architects working in a very refined language of minimalism,” he said. “Each one is expressing a minimalist elegance and beauty in structure … Christian Menn is one of the leaders of this newer generation.”

Streicker, who traveled to Switzerland during the early stages of planning for the new bridge, described Menn’s bridges as “sculptural in their elegance.”

“I think it is splendid,” Streicker said of the new structure’s design. “The sweeping minimalist style, I feel, is perfectly in keeping with the purpose and setting of the new bridge.”

For Streicker, the new bridge also has personal significance.

“When given the opportunity to participate in the bridge project,” he said. “There was no question in my mind that this was a fitting and happily symbolic way for us to give back to Princeton for all it has done for my family.”