Unbuilding the Grace and Pearman Bridges


For Sparky and myself, curiosity drives passion which in turn fuels our life's engine. Our passion was capturing the story of both unbuilding the Grace (1929 - 2007) and Pearman (1966 - 2007) Bridges and discovering the unbuilders. It takes a lot of passion to track a project from July 2005 until April 2007 - rain, shine, hurricanes or moving to Singapore. We discovered the joy of discovery learning. Ken Canty opened the front door for us - then Steve Testa, Ponch Billingsley and Mickey Rogers opened many side doors. Below are the highlights of what we discovered, who we met and what we learned.

And a reminder from T.S. Eliot (East Coker from the Four Quartets)

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.

January 2, 2007: The final cleanup

Its a new year and its clean up time. Three piers to go.

Here is the worksite

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Another view with the Ravenel Bridge in the background

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The last of the unbuilding - the Grace roadway skeleton

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Unbuilding takes time

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Multiprocessing - Carlos and Stan unbuilding in parallel

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Unbuilding the recently built temporary support. Would probably sell as a very creative sculpture

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Unbuilding the support columns

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Another view of parallel unbuilding

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The base of the recently built support foundation

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Carlos and his soft touch

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And Stan's soft touch

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Unbuilding the roadway skeleton

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and more burning

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A view from below - where Pio used to walk

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an interesting pattern of hot steel droplets

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And view of the worksite with the Ravenel Bridge in the background

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

C. Frank Starmer

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