Pierre Nora indicates three roles that are indicative of a lieu de memoire: materiality, symbolism, and functionality. These three categories are not so clear cut with the Providence River Bridge, but nonetheless provide a categorical approach to thinking about the bridge as a monument.
The materiality of the bridge is its most novel and signature aspect. The design is minimalist, sleek, and economically and materially efficient, reflecting an aesthetic of modern engineering practicality – qualities that are futuristic and suited to a streamlined cosmopolitan setting. The new bridge is clean, simple, and evokes a feeling of lightness corresponding to a city that has shed (or is trying to shed) the weight of its past ills and problems.
Above all, however, what made the material aspect of this bridge so innovative was that it was built off site at Quonset Point and literally floated up the Providence River to be installed (this process won many national design awards, and as a civil engineering student, I can't stress enough the visionary scope of this design and implementation). The logistical process behind the construction of this bridge is important to note on several levels, one of which is its relationship to the monument’s symbolic role: the bridge was created according to a postmodern manufacturing technique of global scale, which is analogous to the cosmopolitan scale of the new revitalized image of Providence. The process of sourcing materials, integrating them off site, and then transporting the final product was complex and coordinated on a level that rivals the civil engineering projects of any major city, and also legitimates Providence’s resources and connectedness within the globalized world. The visionary scale of this bridge’s design and its carefully orchestrated implementation thus symbolize the growing identity of Providence as a “world class” city in the postmodern context.
Another reason why the waterway transportation of the bridge was so crucial was that it acted as a public spectacle. Citizens gathered on the banks of the Providence River, in significantly large numbers, to witness the historic journey. This is in stark contrast to most public works projects, which are generally ongoing and uneventful, with far less social participation. This public event was, furthermore, just one component of a larger social consideration at hand. There were a series of podcast videos published by the RI Department of Transportation to keep the public in the loop about major construction developments, and there was also a public walk on the bridge on October 20, 2006, before it was opened to traffic (see below). Together with these other acts of social integration, the float up the Providence River played a significant role in establishing the bridge as a lieu de memoire by incorporating an element of social performance – one of the major ways, Paul Connerton argues in his How Societies Remember, that a social memory is formed and maintained (Connerton 40).
Here is one of the podcast videos, published by the RI Department of Transportation, that documented the floating transportation process and the spectators along the banks of the Providence River. It is clear from this footage that this was an exciting moment for the city of Providence.
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And here are some photos of the public walk on the bridge. There were an estimated 10,000 people attending this walk between 9am and noon on October 20, 2006 (1).
In his book, Connerton briefly outlines an idea of Maurice Halbwachs that is worthy of mentioning in relation to the Providence River Bridge. Halbwachs argued that social groups establish a framework in which people structure their individual memories, and that the memory framework of a given social group is contingent on the physical spaces that it occupies (Connerton 37). In the case of Iway’s campaign, in order to effectively link the network arch bridge with the identity of Providence as a city, the new structure needed to be acknowledged by Providence’s citizens, as a social group, within a poignant physical space. This indeed took place as a commemorative act, or series of commemorative acts, as citizens watched the bridge float up the river and then walked on it during the official ceremonial walk. It is this high level of commemoration that informed the memory framework of Providence’s citizens, along with the ongoing functional use of the bridge – another collective spatial performance.
This baseline functionality is another strong point of the bridge as a lieu de memoire because it translates to a common, visible, and frequent experience. Unlike monuments that must be intentionally visited if they are to be discovered, recognized, or remembered, this bridge is used daily by many of those people who are connected to the city of Providence through residence or work. Furthermore, the act of transportation in cars is suggestive of productivity – whether the drivers are commuting to or from work, going someplace in for a social event, going shopping, etc., driving is an expression of action and productivity that is somehow contributing to the economy, culture, politics, or social life of Providence. It is certainly poetic for those who create the milieu of Providence to come into such routine contact with a monument that represents a revived trajectory of the city.
With all of this said, it is crucial to acknowledge the one-sidedness of this trajectory, and that there is no reason to think that it is necessarily including or unifying the entire population of Providence (there are plenty of people that probably haven't thought twice about the bridge since it was constructed, and may even feel excluded from its visionary symbolism). Rather, the “invisible thread” drawn by the recent downtown developments and the Iway project represent just one proposed direction for the city, i.e. cosmopolitanism, and a politically debated direction at that. Still, this direction is legitimate enough to have been engrained into architectural city spaces and the social memory of a significant portion of Providence. Although the Providence River Bridge may reflect no more than a single narrative, it certainly acts as a powerful lieu de memoire for it.
Back to The Network Arch Bridge by Ariel Schecter
(1) "Iway." Wikipedia. 9 Feb. 2009. 19 Feb. 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iway>.
