|
|
Vol. LXIII, No. 27
|
|
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
|
|
|
|
Vol. LXIII, No. 27
|
|
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
|
People driving along Washington Road will soon see a new sight spanning the roadway. Work on Streicker Bridge is underway, with the curved metal pipe that supports the structure already installed. By the end of this summer, concrete for the arches comprising the pedestrian walkway will be poured.
Construction on the bridge is scheduled to close Washington Road from Faculty Road to Ivy Lane from 8 p.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Monday, July 10 to 13, and again on July 17 to 20.
The bridge, which spans 300 feet, is located between Ivy Lane and Faculty Road on Washington, and is designed to connect the east and west sides of Princeton University’s campus. It is scheduled to be complete by the fall of 2010, to coincide with the opening of the new Chemistry Building.
In 2006, the University announced that real estate executive John Harrison Streicker, of the Class of 1964, had made a gift to fund the building of the new bridge. The father of three Princeton alumni, he said that “because the University helped bridge two generations of my family, I thought building an actual bridge was a particularly appropriate way to give back.”
Designed by Swiss engineer Christian Menn and engineering and design company HNTB of New York, the bridge serves a two-fold purpose: providing a safe pedestrian walkway to link the halves of campus and connect the buildings in the Natural Sciences Neighborhood, and to act as a gateway into the campus and community.
As part of the Princeton Campus Plan, the Natural Sciences Neighborhood incorporates the Biology, Geosciences, Mathematics, Physics, and Astrophysics departments and includes the Lewis-Sigler Center for Integrative Genomics. Once the new Chemistry building is complete, it will be part of the neighborhood, as will the proposed neuroscience and psychology buildings.
Designed by Hopkins Architects of London in collaboration with Payette Associates of Boston, the Chemistry building can be seen on the east side of Washington Road, with the installation of its facade scheduled to be complete by the end of the summer. The four-story building is 263,000 square feet and incorporates green design elements.
Streicker Bridge will link the Chemistry Building, and other science-related structures like the Peter B. Lewis Science Library on the east side of Washington Road, to the Icahn Laboratory, and the new neuroscience and psychology buildings to be designed by Jose Rafael Moneo on the west side of the road.
Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman said that the bridge “will stand as a tangible symbol of the cross-disciplinary collaborations that are central to scientific research and teaching today, and that will facilitate pedestrians’ safe navigation of campus.”