Harrisburg’s Harvey Taylor Bridge opened to fanfare 70 years ago, but it brought unintended consequences | Column

A crowd arrives for the dedication of the M. Harvey Taylor Bridge at North Front and Forster streets in Harrisburg on Jan. 24, 1952. (PennLive file)

State Senate President Tempore M. Harvey Taylor, second from right, smiles during the dedication of his namesake bridge in Harrisburg in 1952. He's shown with, from left, Gov. John Fine, acting Highways Secretary F.L. Schmidt, wife Bertha May Taylor, state police Commissioner C.M. Wilhelm, bridge designer Frank Masters and U.S. Sen. James Duff. (PennLive file)

Crews work on the Forster Street widening project in Harrisburg in 1952. The M. Harvey Taylor Bridge is shown at the top. Originally, the bridge plan called for a high-level span that would carry traffic over North Front and North Second streets, and land on North Third Street. But the project was changed to build a street-level bridge after property owners objected. (PennLive file)

M. Harvey Taylor, shown in 1954, was one of the most powerful people in Pennsylvania . The native of Harrisburg's Shipoke neighborhood was Pennsylvania's Republican Party boss for three decades and served as state Senate president pro tempore from 1945 to 1964. He died in 1982 at age 105. (PennLive file)

Construction of the M. Harvey Taylor Bridge piers continues in September 1950. (PennLive file)

The partly finished M. Harvey Taylor Bridge over the Susquehanna River is shown from the West Shore in 1951. (PennLive file)

During construction of the M. Harvey Taylor Bridge, the Goldsborough Mansion was moved from the 800 block of North Front Street to the 100 block of Forster Street, where it would serve as offices for engineering company Gannett Fleming Corddry and Carpenter Inc. The 1,100-ton structure was built as a residence in 1912 and serves as a JusticeWorks Youth Care location today. (Joe McClure, Advance Local)

The milelong M. Harvey Taylor Bridge, which spans the Susquehanna River and connects Harrisburg and Wormleysburg, opened 70 years ago. It was the first toll-free river bridge in Harrisburg. (Jimmie Brown, PennLive, 2021)

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It was a parade of progress. That was the idea, anyway.

On a frigid January day, a surrey carrying women dressed in Gay Nineties attire rolled along a Harrisburg bridge. Behind it rumbled a 1905-model automobile.

But this wasn’t the turn of the century.

This was 1952, and these antique conveyances were sandwiched between modern-day cars, buses and taxis making the first official trip across the M. Harvey Taylor Bridge.

The bridge, the first toll-free span across the Susquehanna River in Harrisburg, had just been dedicated in a ceremony at North Front and Forster streets attended by 3,500 people.

In his dedication message, Gov. John Fine praised the bridge’s namesake, M. Harvey Taylor, and said the bridge represented “another milestone in the continued progress of Harrisburg and Dauphin County.”

“I don’t deserve this compliment,” Taylor said. “It’s darned embarrassing.”

Despite the “aw, shucks” pose, Taylor was one of the most powerful people in Pennsylvania. The Harrisburg native was state Senate president pro tempore, a post he would hold for about 20 years. More significantly, Taylor was the boss of Pennsylvania’s Republican Party, which he would lead for three decades.

The bridge, which was the result of legislation proposed by Taylor in 1949, promised a solution in an increasingly motorized Harrisburg area: a way to ease traffic congestion without paying tolls.

Monday marks 70 years since the Harrisburg-to-Wormleysburg bridge opened. Though praised in its day, the span also ran into resistance. Today, the city is seeking to undo some of its effects.

A bridge without tolls

Before the Taylor bridge, Harrisburg had only two vehicular bridges that crossed the river, at Market Street and Walnut Street, and both required tolls.

Opposition to toll bridges arose in Pennsylvania by the early 20th century.

“(T)oll roads and bridges — once eagerly sought to satisfy public demand for improved transportation — now were viewed in exactly the opposite light, as nuisances to be eliminated,” Dan Cupper wrote in “The People’s Bridge,” a history of the Walnut Street Bridge.

For years, the General Assembly sought to buy the state’s toll bridges and end the fares. The abolition of tolls on these spans, including the Market Street and Walnut Street bridges, wouldn’t come until 1957. Interestingly, the idea has resurfaced recently, with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation proposing to institute tolls on the South Bridge in Harrisburg and eight other spans in the state.

In the meantime, the four-lane Harvey Taylor Bridge provided competition to the toll bridges.

The state chose to place the bridge at Forster Street for several reasons, Patriot-News columnist Mary O. Bradley wrote in 1997. Among them: The state was acquiring property there to expand the Capitol grounds, it would help link traffic to a planned expressway to the State Street Bridge, and it was close to the city’s business district.

Objections and evictions

The bridge project, as well as the state’s Capitol Park plans, required widening Forster Street, a residential roadway.

In April 1951, 200 residents on the south side of Forster between Front and Third streets received notices that they had 60 days to move before the state would raze their homes for the bridge project.

Some residents had lived there all their lives, and some viewed the bridge project as unnecessary or felt it should be built elsewhere.

After the bridge opened, the state continued to buy Forster Street property in the 1950s and ‘60s.

The state served more eviction notices as it planned to raze more than 200 properties between North Third and Seventh streets to make way for the expansion of Capitol Park. Hundreds of people had to find new homes.

Among the casualties of this expansion was the Forster Street YMCA, a community center for Black people in Harrisburg, in the 600 block. Also, the Black-owned Hooper Memorial Home was forced to relocate to Cumberland Street. Today, the funeral home is on Walnut Street in Susquehanna Township.

Unintended consequences

After the ceremony at the Harvey Taylor Bridge on Jan. 24, 1952, the dedication party had lunch at the West Shore Country Club in East Pennsboro Township.

This Harrisburg-to-West Shore movement was a sign of things to come.

Harrisburg’s population peaked at 89,544 in 1950. But postwar suburbanization taking place across the U.S. would affect Harrisburg, too, as 1960 marked the first of five decades of population decline.

Although it was not the only cause of the city’s falling population, the Harvey Taylor Bridge certainly symbolized it.

As Patriot-News columnist Paul Beers put it in 1983: The bridge relieved traffic congestion at Market Square in Harrisburg, “but it also relieved the traffic jam at the Lemoyne Bottleneck, that age-old gateway to the West Shore.”

In recent years, another consequence of the bridge has arisen: dangerous traffic.

In 2018, then-Mayor Eric Papenfuse listed Forster Street among the city’s “poorly designed” roads intended to maximize the speed of vehicles.

“We’ve got to put that back in balance,” he said.

Indeed, Front and Forster streets, where the 1952 dedication took place, and Third and Forster streets rank among Harrisburg’s most dangerous intersections. The city has begun to address such problems in its Vision Zero traffic safety program.

The Harvey Taylor Bridge illustrates a frequent lesson of history: What was touted as “continued progress” 70 years ago can have unintended consequences along the way and today.

Joe McClure is a news editor for The Patriot-News. Follow him on Instagram: @jmcclure5nine.

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