Museum Looks Back At The Building Of The A. Piatt Andrew Bridge

Gloucester — For the past few months, a collection of photographs of the construction of the A. Piatt Andrew Bridge has been located on the third floor of the Cape Ann Historical Museum, can be found a collection of photographs of the construction of the A. Piatt Andrew Bridge.

Six decades ago there was no A. Piatt Andrew Bridge curving over the Annisquam River and connecting the island of Cape Ann to the rest of the world. The Blynman Bridge – (also known as the Cut bridge) on Stacey Boulevard was the only way for Gloucester residents to leave the island.

Those who remember that time say Gloucester was a different place.

In an interview with Peter Anastas for an archive project a few years ago, the late Austin Connors said, “Prior to 128, Gloucester took care of itself. You remember when we were kids, Main Street on Friday night was unbelievable. You couldn’t get from Hancock Street to Center Street. It was like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. . . . That all went when these shopping centers started. It all went out.”

Fred Buck, the photo archivist at the Cape Ann Museum, said the late poet Charles Olson “ranted about that bridge. It was the end of Gloucester as people had known it. Instead of the ferry there was this colossus. It was the fore-runner of urban renewal.” However, he also added that with the bridge, “all of a sudden [Gloucester] was a viable place to have business on a modern scale. That bridge brought people in, and it let people leave as well — a two way street.”

The man who helped change it all was Lloyd O. Runkle, and fortunately for Gloucester’s historians, not only was he a civil engineer, but he was also a talented photographer. With an artistic eye, he documented the three-year process of building the bridge, from 1947 to 1950, from beginning to end.

Buck has diligently and enthusiastically gone through the collection of 700 negatives donated to the Cape Ann Museum by Lloyd’s granddaughter, Virginia Runkle Scott. The photographs were stored in a small 3-by-6-inch box, banded by date and “meticulously annotated.” Buck was immediately fascinated not only because of the artistic quality of the images, but because of the timing of their arrival. They were given to the museum during preparations for the Olson Centennial Celebration, and as the state project to renovate the bridge was underway.

“It just blew my mind. It all happened at the same time,” said Buck.

Runkle was not a Gloucester native, however he spent much of his life here and a number of his family members did as well. In a newspaper clipping from Ohio, where he grew up, he was described as “a young man of excellent character and ability and has had much experience in both mechanical and civil engineering.”

He married Helen M. Tarr of Gloucester and after serving as a City Engineer for a time in Ohio, he and his family relocated to East Gloucester. He eventually went to work for the Mass Department of Public Works, and was one of the original surveyors and engineers assigned to the Route 128 project. As a spokesman for the project, he gave lectures on how the work was progressing to the Cape Ann Scientific, Literary, and Historical Association.