Riverside Drive Bridge

Riverside Drive Bridge. . Originally known as the Victory Boulevard bridge, the Riverside Drive bridge was constructed in 1938 to improve a bottleneck caused by an earlier wooden bridge. It was partially funded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA). It is a concrete t-beam girder bridge with five spans over the river and measures 381 feet in length. It is designed in the art deco style with striping along the tops of the piers, horizontal bands below the railings, and geometric shapes on the face of the bridge. It was determined eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places on December 7, 2005 and was designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #910 in 2008. The Riverside Drive bridge was seismically retrofitted in 1992, and then between 2015 and 2017, it was widened on its east side by approximately 19 feet to provide a median, wider shoulders, and wider sidewalks. The bridge railings, light posts, and lanterns were replaced as part of the project. The new railings are identical to the original railings, with the exception of the size of the window openings, which have been narrowed to meet code requirements. The new light posts and lanterns are replicas retrofitted with LED fixtures. The widened side of the bridge was designed to complement the original art deco style of the bridge.