Saint Johns Bridge
— the green gothic arch above the cottonwoods.
Not only on a wall.
“A 1931 suspension bridge in the gothic style, painted the green of fir needles and verdigris. The towers stand 408 feet above the Willamette, and the cables drop in long pale catenaries from the Cascade-facing side. Under the east approach the piers rise like a stone nave, and the neighborhood there is called Cathedral Park for the obvious reason. Light moves through the cables most evenings.
Saint Johns Bridge, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Saint Johns Bridge crosses the Willamette River about six miles downstream of central Portland, joining the Saint Johns district on the east bank to Linnton and the West Hills on the other side. It was designed by David B. Steinman and completed in 1931. The main span runs 1,207 feet between two steel towers rising 408 feet above the water, and at opening it held the longest suspension span west of Detroit. The Oregon Department of Transportation still maintains the deck and the original green paint specification today.
The east landing rests on a set of reinforced-concrete piers that rise about eighty feet from the riverbank. Their parabolic arches were styled after the gothic, and the open bay beneath the bridge deck reads as a nave to anyone standing in the grass at Cathedral Park. The park was platted in 1980 on land that had been a longshoreman's marsh and a Lewis and Clark expedition campsite in November 1805. On clear afternoons the piers throw printed shadow across the lawn.
The bridge faces roughly east-west and the cables catch the evening sun coming off the Tualatin hills. From late spring through August the deck lights switch on around 9 PM, and the green steel reads almost teal against a sky still holding light. In winter the Willamette runs the colour of slate and the bridge holds the only saturated colour in the frame. The cables drop in clean catenaries from each 408-foot tower and at certain angles read flat green against the West Hills.