A new pedestrian bridge linking Northeastern University’s main campus with its expanding science and engineering campus across a divide of five railway lines got a major boost this past weekend. In the early hours of Sunday morning, after the last train had cleared the flood-lit site, one of the largest cranes on the East Coast hoisted a 242,000-pound, 132-foot steel span over the tracks. Placement of the section, together with a shorter segment craned into place the night before, marks a milestone in the development, scheduled for completion next spring, that will also connect Boston’s long-separated Fenway and Roxbury neighborhoods.
“The vision for the bridge was to make an event—an artistic experience—of the crossing, born out of a sense of flow and movement,” said Robert Schaeffner, a principal with Boston-based Payette Architects, at a midnight master class held prior to the crane lift. (It’s uncommon for an architect to lead the design of a bridge. Payette’s role arose from the client’s concern to maintain aesthetic harmony between the new connector and the first, Payette-designed, academic building on the other side.)
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