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LONDON BRIDGE.   Term Paper ID:26106 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Historical, cultural & architectural analysis of bridge & its evolution, fate & succeeding structures.... More...

7 Pages / 1575 Words 2 sources, 3 Citations, APA Format $28.00 Return to List of Papers

Paper Abstract: Historical, cultural & architectural analysis of bridge & its evolution, fate & succeeding structures. Paper Introduction: When people in the United States today hear the term "London Bridge," they are most likely to think of one of the most peculiar sights anywhere within the United States  that of the London Bridge in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Surrounded by faked-up Tudor buildings and busloads of tourists, the large bridge is dwarfed by the majesty of the desert Southwest. The entire enterprise stands as a monument to a deep human appreciation for irony, for what else could explain the immense cost and energy that went into transporting such an immense structure such a long way for so very little purpose. But this peculiar structure in the desert is in fact not the real London Bridge at all (if any bridge can in fact lay claim to that title, which seems unlikely), but the New London Bridge, designed in 1831 by the Scottish engineer John Rennie  Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Itmight be hyper-modern, a strong, sound construction of metal designed tolast millennia rather than centuries, clean-limbed, flaunting the ribs andtransoms of its construction. Masonry is a durable and venerable building material, but modernarchitects find it problematic for its tendency to shift and for theconstant repair (or re-pointing) required to keep the mortar intact. Problems in maintaining a sufficiently highlevel of watertight-ness were caused by both the natural forces of erosionworking on the stone and the vibrations from heavy traffic across thebridge and prompted many of the repairs that the bridge was subjected toduring its lifetime, and it was the continual deterioration of its pieragesthat prompted it to be replaced by New London Bridge. Theentire enterprise stands as a monument to a deep human appreciation forirony, for what else could explain the immense cost and energy that wentinto transporting such an immense structure such a long way for so verylittle purpose. (1998). CD Version. Italso sported a drawbridge in the middle, creating a compromise betweenpermanence and flexibility, for one of the problems of bridge building hasalways been to balance the needs of pedestrians and earth-bound vehicles(who want bridge wide and stable and permanently available) and boats (whosee bridges only as impediments). (1973). To provide this proper support, the bridge rested on 2 piers. The process of building stone edifices was popular among the manyNormans who moved to London after the conquest, no doubt in some largemeasure because they wanted structures that could be easily defended if thenative population became restive. Encyclopedia Britannica. (Today the province of Normandy is replete withancient stone buildings that are still both beautiful and sound.) The continuing influence of Norman architectural ideas as well as thepresence of the descendants of Norman masons may have influenced theleaders of the city when in 1176 they tore down the existing wooden bridgerebuilt it with stone. Agreat deal of civic construction followed the building of the Tower. Phoenix, AZ: Carlos Elmer. Or perhaps the bridge would be built (still mostly of modern metalalloys) with a sense of its history -- with stores and even houses oncemore along its span. Thesewere filled with rubble. Old London Bridge is not enshrined in the Arizona desert, noranywhere else in the world. In 1832, the historic stones that had been thebridge for more than six centuries were torn apart and scattered throughoutthe island, to end up in garden walkways and rural walls. The Thames that flows through London is in several ways thearchetypal site for a bridge. While London had only 1 , to15, inhabitants in 1 85, by 12 it had 3 , people (EncyclopediaBritannica, CD entry on London). Those people were a heterogeneous lotethnically, including Danes, Germans, Flemish, Italians, and Gascons alongwith the English and the Normans. And, inevitably,these pathways in time became long enough that they crossed over streamsand rivers. The Romans mayhave been the first to lay a masonry-constructed span across the ThamesRiver, for the Romans were excellent bridge builders (and could hardly helpthemselves from building bridges throughout their empire). Many of the paintings, drawings andprints that are the only extant visual record of the bridge show it crowdedwith houses, forming almost a separate entire separate village witheverything it needed to support itself -- except of course arable land.But with immediate access to both the river and the land, the people wholived on Old London Bridge were unlikely to be marooned without food. The switch toward masonry buildings had also been helped along by theLondon fire of 1 87, which destroyed much of the city. By the time of the building of London Bridge, the city was in factboth the capital and center of the country. Too,they understood the basic physics involved -- among them the fact that anyspan of a bridge must be properly supported. During the time that Old London Bridge was built, the city itself wasgrowing in population and importance. They did have, however, have their native intelligence, andlifetimes of experience in living with both the river and bridges. It was in partbecause Old London Bridge was so thoroughly destroyed that the New LondonBridge was saved and moved (Elmer, 1973, p. Humans have always placed their settlementsnear water whenever possible (anyone who has ever had to carry all theirwater from an even semi-distant stream will appreciate the wisdom in havingto carry water only a short distance) and so early settlers were drawn tothis reliable source of good water. When this very first London bridge was constructed is not clear. Designer Peter de Colechurchdied four years before the bridge's completion after 33 years ofconstruction, and the bridge served as his tomb -- one of many structuraladornments that the bridge would acquire over the years (Elmer, 1973, p.3). A great deal of constructionhad been taking place in the city in the decades leading up to the buildingof this structure. Each of the 2 piers of Old London Bridge was set into a wooden"starling" -- in shape something like an oval but with pointed ends. And they had at theirdisposal all the essential simple tools necessary for construction --levers, inclined planes, wedges -- and energy supplied by both humans anddraft animals. A newest London Bridge that would not be -- asbridges have been for so long -- just a fast way to get from one place toanother, but a destination in itself, a location, not simply a transitzone. Inproportion to its weight, stone and other masonry materials are far lessstrong than allows like steel -- or titanium, although this latter isprobably too expensive to use in the construction of bridges. But beyond this desire for defensibleconstructions, the Normans may have built in stone because they weretraditionally good masons and stone was a material that they feltcomfortable working with. A bridge built today might take one of two different aspects. 2). A number of Jews had come with theNormans in 1 66 and served as financiers in the city (and so may havecontributed to the financing of the bridge) until they were expelled in129 . Many of those whocould afford to do rebuilt in stone or tile to avoid such a disastrousrecurrence, but many could not afford to pay the masons to build in stonefor them and so still used wood, which remained the primary buildingmaterial used in the city for centuries. Such a bridge could help reconnect people to their river -- perhapseven through such obvious means as installing water quality meters thatpeople could read as they stood for a few minutes engaged in watching theriver flow by and in wondering -- as people have done since before even thefirst bridge -- where all that water was going to in such a hurry. (Rubble-based masonry construction is one of themost ancient forms of human building.) Each of these starlings served as acofferdam -- a watertight compartment designed to keep the undergroundelements of structure dry. As the population grew, inevitablythere was not be enough room on one side of the river, so a bridge musthave been built to connect the two parts of the land. In fact, Old London Bridge can be seen in many ways asan extension of the work begun by the Norman William the Conqueror who,after establishing himself in England in 1 66, began construction of theTower of London as a fearsome place to overawe the unrepentant populace. Old London Bridge was in fact certainly not the first bridge inLondon, it was not even the first span to bear that name. When people in the United States today hear the term "London Bridge,"they are most likely to think of one of the most peculiar sights anywherewithin the United States -- that of the London Bridge in Lake Havasu City,Arizona. It does seem a poor sortof thanks to give to a structure that was for so many years vital to theeconomy of the city as well as to its self-image. References Elmer, C. But this peculiar structure in the desert is in fact not the realLondon Bridge at all (if any bridge can in fact lay claim to that title,which seems unlikely), but the New London Bridge, designed in 1831 by theScottish engineer John Rennie -- a bridge that became quickly antiquatedwhen the car forever changed traffic patterns in England's capital city,prompting the construction of the bridge that is still used. The workers who built Old London Bridge -- while still subject to a number of terrible parasites -- were nonethelessless likely than the Londoners of a century before to die of typhoid orcholera. Such work is the product of blueprintsdesigned to infinitesimal tolerances by computer programs and put intoplace by formally trained engineers and unionized work crews -- all unheardof in the 12th century. Entries on bridges, masonry, andhistory of London. Perhaps because of itseventual dissolution, today we tend to remember the first lines of thefamous nursery rhyme that tells us that "London Bridge is falling down" andforget the later words of the rhyme that promise that the people of Londonwill "Build it up with stone so strong that it will last for ages long."But perhaps it is indeed better that the stones once gathered fromthroughout the London area for the bridge have returned to where they came,allowing so many people the chance to own a little of the city's patrimony. Although still open to the air (andso hardly meeting modern codes for the disposal of sewage) these were asignificant improvement over the practice of simply dumping sewage intostreets with no drainage system. The kind of movable span that Old LondonBridge contained is also called a bascule, and is related to one of theearliest forms of bridges -- the bascule bridge formed from a flap offramed timber across the moat of a castle, drawn up by chains from inside. Assoon as people began to walk upright on their hind legs, they began makingpaths (and then roads) to go from one place to the next. One fortunate aspect of the 11thcentury fire was the fact that in the rebuilding the city some streets werefitted out with sewers and conduits. (Repairs could beaffected to the piers when the river was at low tide.) The modern reader tends to associate bridges with the relativelylimited task of allowing people and vehicles to travel from one side of abody of water to the other, but the people of London (as well as of therest of medieval Europe) also saw bridges as gathering places, sites ofcommerce and as prime real estate. The Thames is an ideal span for the construction of a drawbridge --which must always have one or two spans hinged and counterweighted --because it is a narrow waterway with heavy traffic. The workers who created the bridge might seem primitive by today'sstandards for they had few of the tools that modern bridge makers howemploy. It is hard to imagine that the inhabitants of theThames-divided city had not yet built some sort of structure. London Bridge. Surrounded by faked-up Tudor buildings and busloads of tourists,the large bridge is dwarfed by the majesty of the desert Southwest. Old London Bridge was designed in 1176 by a chantry priest of ColeChurch and was a masterpiece of construction, certainly in its time andarguably of any time, for any human creation that withstands six centuriesof daily use must be fundamentally sound. Bythe time of the Roman occupation of Britain in the 1st century AD, Londonwas already a town of considerable importance, although not yet anadministrative center (and the Romans in fact did not make it the center oftheir British colony). Certainly if another bridge were to be built today at the same pointon the Thames, it would not be constructed of masonry as it was in the 12thcentury. Bridgesthemselves are one of the most ancient forms of human construction. The 1894 Tower Bridgethat also lies across the Thames River is probably the most famous exampleof this type. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.