Changing the face of Charleston : The unbuilding of the Grace and Pearman Bridges
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(Apr 10)
Meeting St. Stories
(Jul 10 2006)
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(Feb 17)
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January 5, 2006:
Unbuilding the Grace Bridge - a family affair

For Pio, unbuilding the Grace Bridge is a family affair. His mom, Grace, was born in 1910 - so she would have been about 20 when the Grace Bridge was built. Pio has 11 brothers and sisters - a large family, just like the Grace Bridge - large enough to handle the 1930s traffic between Mt. Pleasant and Charleston. So when the time to unbuild Grace arrived, Pio volunteered his team to unbuild Grace. His team is over half way now as seen in this view of the worksite.

And his team - Speedy

Richie Bagen - who with Michael Hebb, Jack Foley and Bob McCabe are my Professors of Unbuilding

Roy Delpriete - taking over the grapple for Brad.

and picking up sections of concrete roadway

From here, unbuilding is all down hill

Pio is doing the fetching and toting of roadway segments - building Joe Duffy's sidewalk to I-95 - here backing up hill to move more concrete sections to the reef transplant staging area

and a smile from Pio

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Attribution: C. Frank Starmer and Sparky Witte from http://oldcooperriverbridge.org