Swing Bridge and a Living Harbor

This bridge's four-meter deck connects two nearby quays, but at the ship channel it rests on a support with a turning mechanism. When the barriers close, the forty-two-meter span moves aside in a minute and a half, clearing the way for working vessels. For more than a century, port employees, sailors, and visitors were carried between the quays in small boats; the current crossing gave pedestrians space on the shore while preserving movement on the water.

A narrow ship channel runs beneath the deck, by the entrance to Alfred Basin. It was dug in the nineteenth century so that vessels could enter the protected harbor. The quay was cut through by water: the opposite bank was close, but a permanent bridge would have blocked the ships' way.

From eighteen eighty, people were carried across this gap in a small rowboat. The fare was one penny, hence the name Penny Ferry. David Abdoel Wasserfall worked here as a ferryman longer than anyone else. These short trips supported him for forty-three years, six days a week. In a day, he crossed the channel around four hundred times. Each time, Wasserfall guided the boat across the very passage used by working vessels.

For more than a century, ferrymen carried port employees, sailors, and visitors from one quay to the other. In December nineteen ninety-seven, the first pedestrian swing bridge opened. The ferry was taken out of service: people gained a permanent crossing, while the boatmen lost work that had existed thanks to forty meters of water. The passage was kept clear for vessels—the span moved entirely to one side.

By two thousand nineteen, the old two-meter bridge was already carrying more than two hundred thousand pedestrians a month. After the development of Silo District, the management company commissioned the current crossing: four meters wide and forty-two meters long. The engineers had to double the space for people without delaying vessels. That is why the bridge opens in about a minute and a half, turning horizontally around its support; no span remains over the channel.

Working vessels still enter the basin during the day. When the barriers close and the bridge moves aside, the pedestrian route ends exactly where Wasserfall brought his rowboat up to the quay. Only there is no longer anyone to pay a penny.