okay, ugh, i hate these long “let’s learn a thing!” tumblr posts but i guess i’m making one?
to my fellow americans and other non-english/non-londoners (no clue if this is just General Knowledge in the rest of the country). the bridge you’re thinking of as “the big bridge in london”? this guy?
this is not the london bridge. this is the tower bridge, located about half a mile downstream from the current london bridge.
“wait, kiwi, the ‘current’ london bridge??”
so there has been “a bridge at this spot in the thames” since roman times. the romans building a bridge at this spot is part of the founding of london. but the bridges have fallen down and been replaced a number of times because, like, bridges are hard to build and london is a busy place. we’re going against ship-of-theseus rules here and saying when you tear down an old bridge and build a new one in the same place, it’s a new bridge.
my favorite is definitely the “old” london bridge:
which stood from 1209 to 1831, and yes, there is a whole-ass neighborhood on that bridge. it started with henry plantagenet, who accidentally (maybe) ordered the assassination of the archbishop of canterbury, and as public penance ordered a new london bridge to be built, with a chapel to “saint thomas of the bridge” at its center. the city was due for a new bridge anyway, but making a sturdier stone bridge + the very ostentatious chapel made it A Big Deal and also Hella Expensive. later kings would sell plots of property (i almost typed “plots of land” but No) on the bridge to offset costs, but it was still. HELLA EXPENSIVE. which is good because it lasted SIX HUNDRED YEARS. and went through lots of renovations and partial rebuilds and, you know, all the houses and shops on the bridge being renovated because oh my god you put a neighborhood on a bridge and left it there for six hundred years.
but at the end of six hundred years it was falling apart, because all the renovations on top of renovations does weird shit to masonry after awhile, and also hey! that’s a long time and london is a busy city! so they built “new” london bridge, which opened for transit in 1831:
and it’s an okay-looking bridge, for a stone bridge. but in the timeline of bridge architecture this is about when humans start to get real creative with steel and suspension and other fun engineering tricks. a stone bridge is just kinda... utilitarian. and also, when you’re the busiest bridge in one of the busiest cities in the world, you’re prone to depression. [laugh track]
no, seriously, the bridge started to sink at a rate of about an inch every eight years, slightly faster on one side than on the other. which doesn’t sound like much, but the old bridge lasted six hundred years! new guy’s only been on the job for a century and already slacking like this? suck it up!
but instead of saying that, because it’s a ridiculous thing to say to depressed humans let alone depressed bridges, they decided to dismantle and replace it. city council member ivan luckin, presumably as a joke, suggested selling the pieces of the bridge to offset the cost of building a new one.
robert mcculloch, american oil baron, wannabe real-estate icon, and genuine crazyperson, said “oh, a bridge for sale, you say?”
mcculloch, see, made a deal with the us government to build a city on this deserted chunk of lakeshore. a tourist attraction like “a whole ass bridge shipped from london, england” would bring attention and hopefully buyers to fuckall lake havasu, arizona (the fuckall is silent).
so the deal was struck, the bridge was dismantled and its outermost stones (the pretty, non-structural stuff) were labeled neatly and shipped to the states, and rebuilt over a new concrete structure.
and it... kind of worked? lake havasu isn’t a major tourist attraction in the grand scheme of the country, but considering it’s competing with the grand fucking canyon on the other side of arizona it does alright. it’s a real city and everything!
meanwhile, back in london, it’s the late sixties-early seventies, and that means concrete and brutalism are in in a big way. so here’s your new-new “modern” london bridge, kids.
so to summarize: the tower bridge is a different thing and it’s where you think it is (aka in london), london bridge has been torn down and rebuilt a bunch of times and it’s fine, an american oil baron recycled Once and specifically did it as a macho flex, and humans are amused by ridiculous shit.
this has been your Annoying Tumblr Educational Post, thanks for reading, tip your waitresses and have a nice day.
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