Candace Kanes

Androscoggin Pedestrian Bridge dedication
Saturday, September 8, 2007

Some residents of Brunswick and Topsham, when thinking about the Swinging Bridge – or Swing Bridge – or Le Petit Pont, as it also is known – remember the grocery stores, bakery, restaurant and other businesses nearby on the Topsham or Brunswick sides.

Others recall pushing baby carriages across the bridge, the shortest route to visit relatives on the other side, especially for those who didn't drive.

And then there are the memories of walking from Topsham Heights to Brunswick High School, to athletic activities at Edwards field, or perhaps to school or church at St. John the Baptist. Some think about the pulp mill that used to be on the Topsham side that "smelled something terrible." Or standing with school friends in the middle of the bridge, facing upstream, staring at the water rushing by and feeling the bridge undulate as other kids on bicycles rode by. One woman recalled, "The bridge would sway up and down, squeaking and squealing."

Not to be forgotten are stories of motorcycles, horses, Volkswagen bugs and other cars driving across the pedestrian bridge – and losing their side mirrors in the process.

And, importantly, many remember walking from Topsham to work at the Verney Mill. Earlier generations would have gone to work at the Cabot Manufacturing Company.

It was the addition to the Cabot Mill first announced in 1890 and the need for additional housing for workers that made the pedestrian route across the Androscoggin a necessity.

A group of investors known as the Topsham Land Company planned to build housing in what came to be known as Topsham Heights and thought the bridge would not only help workers get safely and quickly to jobs at Cabot Manufacturing, but also would help make their housing project viable.

Topsham Land Co. met in November 1891 with representatives of the John A. Roebling Sons' Co., of Trenton, N.J., about building a suspension Bridge. They sought out Roebling, in part, because a footbridge in Skowhegan, built a few years earlier with fiber-filled cables, collapsed. Roebling was noted for its wire rope.

Work on the structure began in May 1892 and was completed by the end of October. It cost $2,000.

In 1875, the Brunswick newspaper had reported, "Quite a lot of French Canadians came here last week to work in the Cabot Mill." And in 1892, most of the people attracted to the new housing were French Canadian.

In 1906, Topsham officials – over the objections of Brunswick – convinced the commissioners of Sagadahoc and Cumberland counties that the bridge should become a public "highway" in part because the 375 Roman Catholics living in Topsham sent their children to parochial schools, saving the towns $6,000-$7,000 a year. The "public" designation meant the two towns would share maintenance costs.

The bridge quickly became an important business and social asset – and has remained that to the present.

A survey in 2000 found that, more than 100 years after the bridge was built, 100-300 people a day crossed it. By 2000, though, the bridge was listing and in need of repair to save its life. Its condition made it easy to "swing," a favorite activity of bridge users for generations. While we may wax poetic about the structure's history and its aesthetics, it remains a vital transportation and recreation link between Topsham and Brunswick.

Roebling breakfast
Saturday, September 8, 2007

In 1891 when Charles E. Hacker, Amos O. Reed, George A. Stover, and Frank P. Weatherill – principals of the Topsham Land Co., approached the John A. Roebling Sons' Co. about building a footbridge between Topsham and Brunswick, the New Jersey-based wire rope manufacturer and bridge building firm was well known.

John A. Roebling had perfected wire rope – stronger, more flexible, and easier to handle than fiber rope – and had used his engineering skills to find numerous applications for the material. The company had received much publicity and fanfare for the "impossible" suspension bridge across the Niagara River gorge near the famous falls, completed in 1855 and, of course, the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883.

Hacker, Reed, Stover and Weatherill were planning a housing development on the Topsham side of the Androscoggin that they intended to market to employees of the Cabot Manufacturing Co. – a cotton mill – on the Brunswick side. A footbridge would help workers get to the jobs quickly and safely – and would help the developers sell houses.

The new development, which came to be known as Topsham Heights, also would get workers away from the crowded and unsanitary tenements that surrounded the mill. Cabot Manufacturing owned many of the tenements, which the Brunswick newspaper noted in 1886, six years before the bridge was completed, had been "disgracefully neglected" by Cabot. 1886 was the year of a diphtheria epidemic in Brunswick. Most of the casualties were residents of Cabot tenements, many being French-Canadian children. The paper accused Cabot of "fearfully neglecting" the properties for 15 years.

As three houses were under construction in Topsham, a new section of the Cabot Mill was being built in Brunswick, and, on May 19, 1892, the Brunswick paper reported, "The iron work will be here this week and the work will be pushed along as fast as possible as Mr. Farrington (the supervisor of the project) has got to go to Australia to supervise the erection of a bridge there." Roebling's reputation had spread far beyond the U.S.

A freak tornado in June 1892 delayed construction of the suspension bridge, but the structure was complete by September. The newspaper reported that it was "as substantial a piece of work as one would wish to see. There is no vibration, even when a number are crossing it at the same time." It was painted in October and "Le Petit Pont" quickly became an integral part of the life of a number of Brunswick and Topsham residents.

A Roman Catholic school, which served many of the children of French-Canadian mill workers, had started in 1882 – and is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year – and the only Roman Catholic church, St. John the Baptist, was in Brunswick. Most commercial development was in Brunswick as well. Mill workers and their children had many reasons to cross the bridge frequently – as did friends and relatives on the Brunswick side.

By 2000, the much-loved structure was sorely in need of repair and restoration. What cost $2,000 to build in 1892, cost $610,000 to restore in 2006. Of that, $122,000 was raised locally. This breakfast is helping to raise the additional funds needed to pay for and complete the landscaping on both sides of the bridge, which sports 108 new or reconditioned suspender rods, new wood decking on its 350-foot length, new steel under the deck, reconditioned cable anchor vaults and new side rails. The steel towers, erected in 1912 to replace the original wood ones, have a fresh coat of paint.

But Roebling's famous wire rope suspension cables, installed in 1892, have survived the freak tornado, the flood of 1936, and numerous other natural and human threats – and still grace the Androscoggin Pedestrian Bridge.