No sooner had news of the pending action appeared when an early evening fire (accidental or otherwise) destroyed the old wooden bridge. “Thousands of men and women watched it for four or five hours, from both river banks and from boats.” One witness to the grand sight was a teenaged girl from East Hartford named Mabel Goodwin, who rode down to the river on her bicycle to witness the conflagration with her sister: “The old bridge over the Connecticut River caught fire and was completely burned all excepting a little piece on the west side of the river. Jennie and I rode down to see it burn and nearly everybody that possibly could went. It was a glorious sight and the wind blew up the river so that the sparks were all carried that way and so there was not much danger to the buildings near by. Nobody was killed but two fire horses were burned to death.”18
Two steam-powered ferryboats were soon brought in to carry people back and forth across the river in place of the burned bridge. Despite the disruption of streetcar service, Ms. Goodwin made the trip into Hartford twice during the following week: “We miss the old bridge very much for now one has to transfer from the [street] cars to the boats which now run across the river and then one has to take a car on the other side and it is very inconvenient for they only let so many passengers get on the boats and when there is a crowd one sometimes has to wait for the other boat.”19
While the destruction of the Hartford Bridge by flames added a sense of urgency to the matter of a new crossing, it did not alter the legislative outcome proposed by Buckeley, as some might have hoped. Buckeley’s bill, making the five towns responsible for construction of the new bridge, was enacted soon after the fire. To aid the towns in financing the new span, the bill diverted 50 percent of all taxes paid to the state by any railway company using the new bridge to the towns instead for a period of five years, and 10 percent thereafter. In addition, a second bridge bill was enacted, creating the Connecticut River Bridge & Highway District, to be comprised of the same five towns, which was charged with building a new span up to a maximum cost of $500,000 and with maintaining it once it was completed. Buckeley was appointed as a Hartford representative to the new district and subsequently chosen as its president. Meanwhile, following a recommendation by a superior court judge, the percentages of the cost to be paid by the towns east of the river were lowered considerably, with Hartford now having to bear 79 percent of the total cost, East Hartford 12 percent, and the remaining three towns 3 percent each.20
Even so, the towns east of the river thought the idea unjust that they, and not the state, should be held responsible for the new bridge. In 1895, the town of Glastonbury, in protest, refused to pay even its small 3 percent portion of a five-hundred-dollar assessment for normal bridge repairs, on the grounds that the Bridge & Highway District, whose members were not elected by the town, could not force Glastonbury to maintain a bridge that was not even located within its town boundaries. A month later, the Bridge & Highway District sued Mr. Williams, the treasurer of Glastonbury, in superior court to obtain the fifteen dollars in unpaid funds.
When the superior court upheld the right of the bridge district to tax its member towns, Glastonbury appealed the decision to the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors, where in Morgan G. Buckeley et.al. v. Samuel H. Williams, Treasurer (68Conn131) the action of the lower court was upheld by a vote of three to two. As part of the decision, the court restated in no uncertain terms the legal relationship between the state and its member towns. Contrary to popular belief that the town was the ultimate source of governmental authority in Connecticut, the court confirmed the long-standing legal position that Connecticut towns “have no inherent rights. They have always been the mere creatures of the Colony or the State, with such functions and such only as were conceded or recognized by law.”21 In effect, the state of Connecticut could make any town do its bidding, regardless of existing law, so long as the action had been duly taken by the legislature—to which the town had elected its own representatives. In the most extreme example, the legislature, which had created each town in the first place, could abolish a town’s very existence if it saw fit. With regard to transportation, the decision can be seen as consistent with the tradition of town responsibility for highway improvements, a full decade before MacDonald broke with that tradition by asking for state authority over highway construction.
Following the court decision on the powers of the Bridge & Highway District—and with a temporary wooden bridge now in place across the river, complete with an electric streetcar line—it took eight more years before construction began on a new permanent crossing. The delay was caused first by the need for federal approval of the new span. Because the Connecticut River was considered a navigable waterway as far north as the rapids at Enfield, construction of a new Hartford Bridge required an act of Congress. Congress took up the matter in 1893 and authorized the district to build a drawbridge whose design was to be approved by the secretary of war. However, after much grumbling by those who thought a draw unnecessary since navigation above the bridge was unlikely at best, the law was amended two years later to remove the draw requirement—provided the district agreed to put one in at a later date if so ordered by the secretary of war.22 As a result, the new bridge was built without a draw span.
Adding to the delay, the bridge district and the city of Hartford studied, debated, and studied some more just what kind of bridge to build. Three alternatives were considered: a simple steel girder structure estimated to cost $782,000, a more complicated steel arch design expected to cost $878,000, and a stone arch bridge at a cost of $1,600,000. In conjunction with the bridge, Hartford also decided to build a new approach road along the west side of the river that was estimated to cost an additional $708,000. Finally, in a referendum held on April 2, 1902, the voters of Hartford approved the appropriation of funds necessary to build the more expensive but low maintenance and longer-lasting stone arch bridge across the Connecticut River, together with the proposed approach road, with the city of Hartford to pay all expenses above the $500,000 limit set in the bridge legislation. In keeping with the Supreme Court decision that each town had only the taxing power given it by the state, the following year the legislature approved bills allowing the Bridge & Highway District and the city of Hartford to issue bonds in the amounts necessary to cover their portions of the cost of the new bridge and approach road.23
The new Hartford stone arch bridge, completed in 1908 and later named for Morgan Buckeley.
Crossing the Connecticut, by George E. Wright, 1908
Construction of the new crossing began in the summer of 1903 and lasted five years. Perhaps the most difficult part of the job was the construction of the underwater foundations for each of the six regular and two double piers that would support the span as it crossed the river. Under the guidance of chief engineer Edwin D. Graves, the foundations were constructed using large watertight caissons that were sunk around each pier site to provide a workspace—once the water had been pumped out—for the men known as “sand hogs,” who removed the dirt and rock from beneath the water’s surface. It was filthy, backbreaking labor.
For a day of eight hours, including a half-hour at the surface for coffee and rest, they were paid $2.50 till a depth of 55 feet had been reached, and then, on account of high air pressure, their day would be decreased to six hours and their wages increased to $2.75. Another raise of 25 cents was given while the concrete filling was being done inside the caisson, as the slaking lime made the temperature high, accompanied by an irritating odor. Burly negroes were generally employed in this exhausting work.24
Once the eight piers and the abutments at either end of the bridge were completed, the wooden falsework needed to support the stone arches was constructed within each span, and the exterior and binding stones, some weighing up to forty tons, were hand cut to exacting tolerances and lowered into place. Last of all, the stone understructure of the bridge was filled with concrete to the level of the roadway. The finished roadway was sixty feet wide, with double trolley tracks down the center, and with a ten-foot sidewalk for pedestrians on either side, for a total width of eighty feet.25
The new Hartford Bridge was dedicated on October 6–8, 1908, with three days of parades, concerts, and celebrations