The Seward Park Bridge

From 1920 until 1937 there were numerous proposals to build a bridge from Seward Park to Mercer Island. But the proposal was “so controversial that for many years it was little more than conversation.” That assessment is straight out of a post World War II promotional pamphlet from Puget Sound Bridge and Dredging (PSB&D), the same company that struggled to cobble together a “joint” City-County franchise in 1930 and a year later gained City Council approval for a “feedway” through the Park for the bridge, although any construction of Seward Park Way was encumbered by the possibility of the shorelands reverting back to the State of Washington under a 1913 law. The person who could have best told the story was a wonderful writer, Horace W. McCurdy, an engineer, President of PSB&D, and resident of Mount Baker Park. As President of PSB&D and head of the joint venture which built the Lake Washington floating bridge, he gave that project much of his “personal attention.” Under his watch PSB&D was the second largest employer in Seattle during World War II. Later on he served as President of the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) for two years, made major contributions to MOHAI, and was honored by having the land where MOHAI is located named H. W. McCurdy Park. Although Mac was at least a Vice-President of PSB&D one year after the Company first applied for a franchise for the Seward Park – Mercer Island bridge in 1927 and became President a few years later, there is not one word about the SP-MI bridge in the two volumes of Don’t Leave Any Holidays, McCurdy’s autobiography.

In 1937 Mac suffered a nervous breakdown partially brought on by the stress of running a business during the Great Depression. But who can doubt that the Seward Park bridge, that briefest of all alternatives, which was never to be more than a lengthy series of problems and controversies, must have weighed heavily on McCurdy? There were numerous objections over the PSB&D franchise. The initial idea of a mud or railroad fill inspired fierce opposition. The concept of a privately owned and operated toll bridge stuck in the craw of many in Seattle who favored municipal ownership. Many who lamented the haphazard growth of Seattle’s street car lines as they stretched to reach one or another real estate development thought of the bridge to Mercer Island as another attempt to enrich land speculators. Indeed, A. C. Frost, owner and developer of the Uplands declared in a telegram to the Seattle Times, “The demand for a toll bridge is artificial…Seward Park is the heritage of future generations which must not be despoiled by the greed of private corporations.” But for the Uplands, that district “for architects and fellow kindred professionals” adjacent to Seward Park, Frost sought a 50-year concession for a yacht club in Seward Park in 1927 and was still angling to buy a southern portion of the Park for one in 1938. With the red hot controversy splashed in newspaper headlines vanishing by late 1931, A. C. Frost was not the only player in the controversy who was seemingly able to juggle with impunity such glaring inconsistencies. The motives of both promoter and opponents seemed to lose clarity in the increasingly musky waters of Lake Washington.

Such is H. W. McCurdy. Ralph Bushnell Potts in Seattle Heritage argues that “Puget Sound Bridge and Dredging Company was not inclined to push the scheme” i.e. the bridge, due to the opposition of Clarence Blethen of the Seattle Times and the “deepening depression.” Blethen and a succession of Park Board Presidents – George Stirrat, A. S. Kerry, and especially Simon Burnett – adamantly objected to the bridge because of is impact on Seward Park. The Seattle Times warned against the “defacement of one of its finest parks.” Simon Burnett argued for Seward Park as “one of the last few remaining refuges for those on foot,” and defended the Park forest to the last tree:

If any of the trees are taken away the environment of those in the ranks behind would be changed and they would gradually die out. Then the next and the next, until finally the greatest asset of the city of Seattle would cease to be great and would become just another park, just another piece of land.

Unlike many bridge proponents, Mac never seemed to be under the thrall of our “modern chariot”, the automobile. Don’t Leave Any Holidays is full of pictures and descriptions of boats and dredges and racing shells and even pontoons for bridges, but the car is largely conspicuous by is absence. Gordon Newell writes of McCurdy’s father passing on his “almost mystic love of the Northwest frontier,” which included its “brooding forests”. McCurdy used the occasion of the near completion of the 14^th Avenue South Bridge in early 1931 to laud PSB&D’s ability to “successfully overcome many natural obstacles in constructing for Seattle…bridges.” McCurdy never had occasion to use such language in describing the SP-MI Bridge, perhaps because he shared some of the sentiment of those fighting to preserve Seward Park’s “natural obstacles”.

McCurdy, in terms of promoting PSB&D and its role in construction of the SP-MI bridge, probably made a huge misstep in early 1931. Mac, possibly at the behest of his “friend and shipmate” Charles Clise, was pressed into serving as a leader of the “Committee of 59” set up to defeat the recall of Mayor and bridge supporter Frank Edwards. The Mayor had fired J. D. Ross, the Superintendent of Seattle City Light. The firing alarmed the Citizens Municipal Utilities Protection League and it officers, Mary Zioncheck and Frank Fitts, which then ran a campaign to recall the Mayor. Edwards insisted in one of a number of speeches on KJR that “communism is the root of the present trouble.” The Mayor lost the election and Ross was immediately reinstated as Superintendent. In the Depression-wasted capital markets, Ross walked off after a journey back east with private financing for City Light projects. PSB&D, despite frequent assertions that the bridge was on the verge of “getting underway,” never raised enough money to amount to anything. Moreover, beginning with the 1932 elections, a sea change in politics took place with the election of Roosevelt, placing people in power like Frank Fitts in the City Council and Marion Zioncheck in the U. S, Congress who had little reason to look kindly on H. W. McCurdy. By 1935, under the leadership of John W, “Radiospeaker” Stevenson, Chairman of the Board of County Commissioners, the SP-MI bridge became a County project with PBS&D remaining as the “consulting, designing, and supervising engineer” for the bridge. There is nothing to indicate that Marion Zioncheck was of any help procuring the sought-after federal funds, which in any event failed to materialize as Roosevelt decided to fund the WPA at the expense of the PWA. State Director of Highways Lacy V. Murrow stepped into the muddle after 1937, and with the help of Homer M. Hadley and Miller Freeman revived the old notion of developing what was to become the Mercer Island floating bridge as the most logical part of the route over the Snoqualmie Pass. Thus the Day Street Tunnel, which would serve as the central cross-lake ferry terminal in Virgil Bogue’s 1910 Plan of Seattle, now launched a bridge, completed on July 2, 1940.

The description by D. W. Stuver, Vice-President of PSB&D, of the SP-MI bridge “as being in the nature of a local proposition,” was sufficient to produce an astonishing amount of effort that went nowhere. McCurdy liked to say that “a job which started bad finished bad.” The first effort to build a cross-lake bridge was an attempt by residents of South Mercer Island in 1922 to purchase 15 surplus World War I wooden freighters as pontoons to help bridge the 3000 feet from Seward Park to Mercer Island, and foundered partly because the County declared “it would not be made useful enough to justify the expense, and it would not be centrally located.” Moreover, the members of the Mercer Island Community Club interjected that the “piling approach which it is proposed to build at Seward Park…would spoil the Park to a considerable degree.” Thus by 1922, not only were formidable objections raised publicly against the Seward Park Bridge, almost ensuring a bad start for the project, but the objections suggested the possibility that the SP-MI bridge was simply a bad job which should have been shelved.