A Look Back: Building Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C.

This beautiful old photo shows the construction of Memorial Bridge looking from D.C. towards Arlington National Cemetery. The photo is dated May 15th, 1928.

Looking east at construction on Arlington Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., in the United States. Note the statue on the partially-constructed pedestal just to the right of the abutments (bottom center). The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts erected this mock-up to determine how high statues on the piers of the bridge should be.

Source: Flickr user Tim Evanson

It took 46 years and at least nine major proposals to get to this 1928 construction photo. Read the full 140-year fight to build Memorial Bridge, from the 1886 medieval fortress design through the 250-foot arch proposed for the same site in 2026.

For the building that Memorial Bridge is in axis with, read our pillar: Lincoln Memorial History: Construction, Designs, the Secret Basement, and the Swamp It Was Built On.

2 thoughts on “A Look Back: Building Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C. – May 15th, 1928”

My guess is that the photo of the Memorial Bridge is actually looking west, not east.

It is clearly the Custis-Lee Mansion on the hill in the background. So it is looking from DC into Virginia. The construction company that built the bridge was Parsons-Brinkerhof, by the way.

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