'Monument to Perseverance' talk delves into Newport Bridge

In 1969, the Newport Jazz Festival lineup was an experimental fusion of rock, soul and jazz with acts as diverse as BB King, Led Zeppelin, Buddy Rich, Jethro Tull and Jeff Beck sharing the bill.

Just before the Jazz Festival on July 3, the Newport Bridge officially opened on June 28, 1969, paving the way for hordes of concert-goers to attend the festival. That same summer, the Woodstock Music Festival earmarked a shift in the country’s culture. And yet, only months before these momentous events, visitors were traveling to Newport from that side of Rhode Island via the ferry from Jamestown, just as they had for three hundred years.

Looking back now, James Ricci said, it’s almost inconceivable that the bridge that’s become as iconic to Newport as the mansions was constructed not that long ago. “What struck me was the first event after it opened was the Jazz Festival,” said Ricci, author of “The Newport Bridge.”

Ricci will be talking about his book and the many facets that went into construction of the bridge this Thursday, Sept. 13, in the first-ever Lecture Series at the Narrows Center for the Arts.

He first became interested in the bridge and what took so long to construct it while he was pursuing a doctorate in the Humanities at Salve Regina University. The underpinnings of the program, said Ricci, was the question, “What does it mean to be human in an age of advanced technology?”

The Jamestown Bridge, connecting the mainland to Conanicut Island, was constructed in 1940 and with that piece completed, thoughts turned to the next leg of the route to Newport. For a time, World War II derailed talk of the second bridge, said Ricci.

After the war, Newport was a deteriorating sailor town with all that connotes, and the City by the Sea made a conscious decision to transform from sailor town to tourist destination. But the bridge was the missing component.

In the book, Ricci delves into both sides of the debate over the necessity of the bridge. The Navy, viewing Narragansett Bay as critical to defense, opposed the bridge, said Ricci, as did some of the Jamestown town officials.

The strongest proponents of the bridge were Gerald Dwyer, appointed as chairman of The Rhode Island Turnpike and Bridge Authority in 1959; Alfred Hedefin, a bridge engineer with the Parsons Brinckerhoff engineering firm; and John Chafee, who was elected governor in 1962. “In the book, I called him ‘The Proponent in Chief,’” said Ricci, noting the irony of the bridge eventually being renamed the Pell Bridge in 1992 after Sen. Clairborne Pell.

In researching the book, Ricci said he turned to bridge engineer reports and The Providence Journal’s archives, which covered the issue extensively. “That was a great find, it enabled me to piece the story together,” he said. “I wanted to see what people in the state were learning about the bridge.”

Over the course of the debate, Rhode Islanders were asked to vote on five referendums related to the bridge. Finally, a traffic study showing the bridge would be self-sustained through tolls tipped the voters in favor of building the bridge, said Ricci.

The longest suspension bridge in Rhode Island was also a technological innovation, said Ricci. Among the many technological advances, its main cables were constructed off-site.

Cold winters and labor strikes delayed construction, but it was still built in three and a half years.

Published by The History Press, Ricci said he divided the story of the iconic bridge is into three parts: the political story and the struggle to get it built, the construction of the bridge and the legacy/iconography of the bridge.

Copies of the book will be for sale at Ricci’s talk (“A Monument to Perseverance: The Struggle to Build the Newport Bridge”) at the Narrows Center for the Arts, 16 Anawan St., on Thursday, Sept. 13 at 7 p.m.

Email Linda Murphy at lmurphy@heraldnews.com.