Beloved Riverside bridge now shines even brighter
Illumination project gives enduring Queen St. landmark a boost before the Games
It took three years, about $600,000 and nearly 4,000 emails, but the Riverside District BIA wasn’t going to take plans to illuminate the neighbourhood hallmark lightly.
Over the decades, untold thousands of streetcars have trundled over the beloved Riverside Bridge, and many thousands more residents have passed under its gateway, which since1996 has borne the motto, “This river I step in is not the river I stand in.”
In the evening, the prose furled above a clock face that gently glowed. But in 2015, the BIA decided it was time for the Queen St. bridge to truly shine.
On Friday night, they unveiled the bridge with its new illuminated decor, awash in 78 bright, Pan Am Games-coloured lights.
The project, a private-public partnership with several sponsors including Streetcar Developments, which is also revitalizing the historic Broadview Hotel nearby, was more than a way to put a spotlight on an enduring landmark, BIA member Perry Lupyrypa said. It was an opportunity to celebrate the structure that had long linked the downtown core with the east end.
Built in 1911and known originally as the Queen St. Viaduct, the truss-style steel structure had an open but simple design.
Until he rolled out the inscription and neighbouring art pieces in 1996, the bridge never really felt like a gate- way, said Eldon Garnet, the “west end guy” behind its artwork.
When he won the contest to decorate it, the bridge yearned for sprucing-up and a way to make a statement.
Back then, he recalled, the community at Queen St. E. and Bayview Ave. “wasn’t in that great condition,” and “the east was kind of derelict.” He helped change that.
“I make the joke that I made the art and the neighbourhood cleaned up. It was gentrification, in a way,” he told the Star. “I took it and made it into a landmark and elevated it to a neighbourhood icon.”
From there, the bridge started popping up on T-shirts and in a largescale mural decorating a local restaurant. Commuters began to feel the “ebb and flow” of the area and the river beneath as they passed over the bridge, said Eldon.
It was a magic feeling, one Lupyrypa knows well.
She crosses the bridge at least twice a day and runs underneath it along the newly christened Pan Am Trail frequently.
With the Pan Am athletes’ village nearby, she said, lighting the bridge made it “ready for our world.”
Lighting designer Paul Boken agreed.
“It is a conversation piece. No longer a humdrum,100-metre walk over a corridor. It gives a lot of life to an area,” he said.
“People are sending the BIA pictures taken from their condos from different sides. Those individuals had nothing in common, and now they have the beautiful view of the bridge. It has unified them, and that’s great.”