The crossing of Yale St. over White Oak Bayou is open again as of yesterday, beating that initially announced estimated reopening date by close to a year. The new structure should reduce the chronic weight anxieties of those using the crossing, which has been subject to various pounds-per-axle limits for years.
And what of the original 1931 Yale St. bridge bricks, and their fundraising Friend group?  The online component of the crowdfunded save-the-bricks campaign launched last year fell short of that $100,000 goal by more than a bit, but the organization says that pretty much all of the bricks are still being preserved — most of them were just bought by someone else, for incorporation into a not-yet-officially-announced “art-centered mixed use project in First Ward.” Boulevard Realty, headed by Bricks and Fountain Friend and instigator Bill Baldwin, also recently posted a photo purportedly showing the incorporation of some of the bricks into new segments of the White Oak Bayou greenway trail, something the crowdfunding effort helped pay for:
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The shot looks northeast across White Oak and the Heights Blvd. bridge south of I-10; that’s the Heights Business Center in the middle.
- Rediscovering Yale St. Bridge — Again [Boulevard Realty]
- Previously on Swamplot:Â Court-Protected Freedmen’s Town Bricks Get Torn Up by Construction Crew;Â Friends of Mecom Fountain: 40,000 Yale St. Bridge Bricks Could Use Some Friends, Too;Â Private Group Now Trying to Crowdfund the Un-Restoration of the Mecom Fountain’s Basin Wall;Â Yale St. Crossing of White Oak Bayou To Cut Out in 2 Weeks, Reopen in 2018
Images: TxDOT (top); Boulevard Realty (bottom)
Had to open early before the Superbowl I bet a few more projects get finished early to.
If it took the Super Bowl to get the bridge open sooner, so be it. However, I can’t imagine S B fans trundling up to the Heights. We really shouldn’t overestimate our cuteness.
Considering that there was an actual Super-Bowl-related reason to finish Midtown Park before the Super Bowl (which they failed to do), I wonder if the Super Bowl actually helped get any projects finished early.
The new bridge is really nice. Sidewalks are much wider and protected with a guard rail. Now what do we have to do to get them to put in a sidewalk in front of Sprouts? It has been six years since the Ainbinder 380 agreement was supposed to put a sidewalk on Yale after they ripped out the live oaks in front of San Jancinto Stone.
The Yale bridge got rebuilt, the Walmart Supercenter hasn’t in fact ruined the Heights, and the store itself seems to be doing well. Somebody remind me again what all the fuss was about.
No surprise. I think we all knew 18 months was too long, and questionable; that was quintessential sandbagging!