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.

June 20, 2006:
New player on the block

Out at the Navy Yard the cleanup continues but with a twist. There is a new player in our game

A pile of rebar

A pile of Grace/Pearman pieces (Jackie has been working hard)

Timmy's excavator-in-waiting

and the new player, the 995 from Jay Cashman. This mega-machine does the cleanup after Mickey blows away the piers and substructures. With two barges - it picks up concrete debris from the river bottom and dumps it into one barge while picking up rebar and dumping it in a separate barge. Should be interesting to watch this guy in action

and its bucket

and a view from under

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

C. Frank Starmer

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