These elements, which framed the city’s aspirations in 1931, are still available today as a borrowed elegy for a city full of anxieties about its place. But the viaduct cannot do otherwise, or be other than what it is, so well made was it, with skill and an eye toward the effect of its repeating elements of arch and trefoil, pylon and spire, light and shadow. Some are desires you may not recognize today or want anymore. The Fourth Street Viaduct bears desires across railroad tracks, across access roads, across the blank surface of the Los Angeles River channel, and across time. Huntley Gallery, Cal Poly Pomona, through April 12, 2018. The drawings and paintings accompanying this essay are by Roderick Smith and Richard Willson, and are part of the exhibition, “Positively 4th Street: An Encounter with Los Angeles Viaduct,” on display at the Don B. Its span springs to the traveler’s step in order to seem unmoved. The bridge seems static, but every footfall must be absorbed, its effects distributed by tension or resisted by compression. The traveler is uplifted less by concrete or masonry and more by forces kept in balance with the void waiting below. A traveler comes to a bridge. As the traveler starts to cross, one foot is still earthbound.
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