Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 8, 1990 TAG: 9005080140
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Television personality Ralph Story, in town for Roanoke's Diamond Jubilee celebration, gave the bridge a higher mission when he spoke at ceremonies naming it for Hunter on June 15, 1957.
It was a heady time for Roanoke and Story was in a like mood. He said the bridge connected not only places, but people and ideas.
In fact, what it did best was connect Roanoke to the rest of the state without the necessity of waiting for trains to pass before driving north or south on Jefferson Street.
It was an end to waiting there, frustrated, in summer heat and winter cold.
This was before interstate roads came and before ramps and interchanges got you out of town in a hurry.
The state was poised for the start of the multilane interstate system - gosh, you'd be able to go from Roanoke to Winchester without waiting out a traffic light or a train.
Gen. James Anderson, the commissioner of highways, said the state was starting "on the greatest era of highway development we have known."
Unfortunately, Anderson would not be in office when it started to happen. He would be replaced as commissioner in a few years.
Hunter, city manager of Roanoke for just under 30 years and then a mayor and councilman, died in March 1956, before the dedication.
On Saturday, contractors started taking down the part of the viaduct that carries traffic from Williamson Road to Jefferson Street, to make room for a new office tower.
The Williamson Road section - known in the 1950s as the Second or Randolph Street section - will remain in use. But this didn't turn away criticism of the partial demolition plan.
The entire viaduct affair has furnished some irony.
It was seen in the 1950s as a way to get traffic quickly in and out of a downtown that was then the main shopping area in the Roanoke Valley.
But that was before the shopping malls started to come, eventually luring the big department stores to the suburbs.
In the 1950s, the bridge-viaduct cost about $3 million to build, including the purchase of downtown real estate.
One of the bridges that will be built to substitute for the Jefferson Street leg, as part of a new downtown traffic loop, will cost $6.3 million.
It will run from Second Street Southwest to Gainsboro Road Northwest. It will be four-laned, and it remains to be seen whether some Roanokers will become sentimental about it 30 years from now.
If the bridge-viaduct was rare for the 1950s, its financing was rarer still.
State Transportation Department records show that the federal and state governments shared 80 percent of the cost.
Roanoke shared the remaining 20 percent with the Norfolk and Western Railway.
In addition, the railroad and the city shared in the $130,000 it took to build a pedestrian walkway under the railroad tracks.
Another irony: In later years, the underground walkway became a reasonably high-crime area and was avoided.
A lot of old Roanoke disappeared as buildings were torn down to make way for the new bridge. Newspaper accounts in the 1950s furnish little evidence that anybody publicly regretted this.
The section that carries Williamson Road was opened on Thanksgiving Day of 1955.
It was opened early because of the crowds expected for the football game between Virginia Military Institute and Virginia Tech. The Hotel Roanoke, now closed, was a sort of headquarters for this event.
The Jefferson Street connection opened on July 1, 1956 - but the formal dedication to Hunter didn't occur until the following summer.
After its opening, the late Arthur S. Owens, another city manager who became legend, indicated that there had been some doubts.
"People used to wonder about the value of such a viaduct," Owens said in commenting on traffic counts that showed 117,759 vehicles used the structure in a three-day period in 1956.
"With the number of cars using it, think of the gasoline saved - not to mention the wear and tear on patience and nerves."
by CNB