25 de Abril Bridge

About

The 25 de Abril Bridge (Portuguese: Ponte 25 de Abril, 25th of April Bridge, Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈpõtɨ ˈvĩtɨ (i) ˈsĩku dɨ ɐˈbɾil]) is a suspension bridge connecting the city of Lisbon, capital of Portugal, with the municipality of Almada on the left (south) bank of the Tagus River. It has a main span length of 1,013 metres (3,323 ft; 1.013 km), making it the 56th longest suspension bridge in the world. At the time of its inauguration in 1966, the bridge was named Salazar Bridge (Ponte Salazar), after the Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar, who ordered its construction. After the Carnation Revolution in 1974, which overthrew the remnants of Salazar's Estado Novo regime, the bridge was renamed for April 25, the date of the revolution. It is also commonly called the Tagus River Bridge (in Portuguese: Ponte sobre o Tejo, lit. "bridge over the Tagus"). Later changes had to be made due to the rapid increase in population. In the 1990s, a fifth car lane was added, and in 1999, a lower deck, used as a railway track, which was planned since the beginning, was finally built. Today, the upper deck carries six car lanes while the lower deck carries a double track railway, electrified at 25 kV AC.

From the late 19th century, there had been proposals to build a bridge across the Tagus. In 1929, the idea advanced when the Portuguese engineer and entrepreneur António Bello requested a government concession for a railway crossing between Lisbon and Montijo (where the Vasco da Gama Bridge, the second bridge serving Lisbon, was later built in 1998). As a result, the Minister of Public Works, Duarte Pacheco, created a commission in 1933 to analyse the request. The commission reported in 1934, and proposed building a road and rail bridge. Bids were obtained, but the proposal was subsequently put aside in favor of a bridge crossing the river at Vila Franca de Xira, 35 kilometres (22 mi) north of Lisbon. In 1953, a new government commission started work and, in 1958, recommended building the bridge, choosing the southern anchor point adjacent to the recently built Christ the King monument (Cristo-Rei). In 1959, the international invitation to tender for the project received four bids. In 1960, the winner was announced as a consortium headed by the United States Steel Export Company, which had also submitted a bid in 1935. The American School of Lisbon was founded largely to educate the children of the American engineers brought to Portugal to work on the construction of the bridge.

Construction began on 5 November 1962. Forty-five months later, six months ahead of schedule, the bridge was inaugurated on 6 August 1966. Presiding at the ceremony was the President of Portugal, Admiral Américo Thomaz. Also present were the Prime-Minister, António de Oliveira Salazar, and the Patriarch of Lisbon, Cardinal Manuel Gonçalves Cerejeira. The bridge was named Salazar Bridge (Ponte Salazar), after Prime Minister Salazar. United States Steel International Inc., based in New York, was prime contractor for the bridge. Morrison-Knudsen of Portugal Ltd., an American firm based in Boise, Idaho, was U.S. Steel's principal associate. Morrison-Knudsen had previously worked on the San Francisco Bay Bridge. The bridge was designed by Steinman, Boynton, Gronquist and London of New York, and Tudor Engineering Company of San Francisco. The steel was imported from the US. Four workers died, out of a total of 3,000 who worked on the site. Construction took a total of 2,185,000 man-hours of work. The total cost of the bridge came to 2.2 billion Portuguese escudos, or US$32 million (US$225 million in 2011 adjusted for inflation). Soon after the Carnation Revolution in 1974, the bridge was renamed the "25 de Abril Bridge", the day the revolution had occurred. A symbol of those times was captured on film, with citizens removing the large brass letters spelling "Salazar" from one of the main pillars of the bridge and painting a provisional "25 de Abril" in its place.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.