[Alaskan Way Viaduct/Reconstruction of the Ballard Bridge], 1950/1940

Original format: 16mm (transferred to DigiBeta), color, silent
Unedited footage created by the City of Seattle Engineering Department featuring shots driving along the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the reconstruction of the Ballard Bridge. Opens with paving and removal of streetcar rails. Construction of Ballard Bridge includes shots of workers and bridge at various stages and ends with opening celebration including parade with floats, bands, and baton twirlers.
The Ballard Bridge was originally built in 1917, spanning 2,854 feet across the Ship Canal, to connect Ballard with the Interbay, Magnolia and Queen Anne neighborhoods. In 1937 the Seattle City Council passed an ordinance authorizing work to begin on reconstructing the bascule bridge. Completed in 1939, the reconstruction replaced the timber approaches with approaches of concrete and steel that featured ornamental lighting. The cost was $800,000, funded 45 percent by the federal Depression-era Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the remainder by Seattle’s share of the state gasoline tax. The work closed the roadway for the year and a half of construction. For the duration, people crossing the ship canal were obliged to drive over the Fremont Bridge or the Aurora Bridge.
The Alaskan Way Viaduct is a defunct elevated freeway in Seattle, that carried a section of State Route 99 (SR 99). The double-decked freeway ran north-south along the city's waterfront for 2.2 miles, east of Alaskan Way and Elliott Bay, and traveled between the West Seattle Freeway in SoDo and the Battery Street Tunnel in Belltown.
The viaduct was built in three phases from 1949 through 1959, with the first section opening on April 4, 1953. It was the smaller of the two major north-south traffic corridors through Seattle (the other being Interstate 5), carrying up to 91,000 vehicles per day in 2016. The viaduct ran above Alaskan Way, a surface street, from S. Nevada Street in the south to the entrance of Belltown's Battery Street Tunnel in the north, following previously existing railroad lines.
Item 524, Seattle Engineering Department Moving Images, Record Series 2613-09 Seattle Municipal Archives