2 September 2025
By Tess Riley
The Lens
For more than a century, the St. Claude Avenue lift bridge over the Industrial Canal has withstood life-altering floods and record-breaking hurricanes.
Last November, it became a national historic landmark.
But it faces an uncertain future because of expansion plans proposed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a 14-year construction process that will destroy and replace the bridge to accommodate more barge traffic in the canal.
Any impacts on historic structures like the St. Claude Bridge must be addressed through the federal government’s Section 106 process, which focuses on historic and significant sites, emphasizes Sandra Stokes of the Louisiana Landmark Society. In this case, Stokes said the Army Corps has moved this process at an “unprecedented” pace despite changes to the scope and timeline of this project and other related projects in the area.
The four-lane bridge is a landmark and treasure, they say. Built in 1919 by the Bethlehem Steel Bridge Corporation, it’s one of the nation’s last functional “bascule bridges,” in which part of the bridge pivots upward to allow the canal traffic to move through.
Photo courtesy of The Lens
The Army Corps first suggested the project before Hurricane Katrina. Every once in a while, it seems to raise its head again. But to some observers, this new rush makes the project feel more likely this time. Yet, preservationists and people who have spent their lives crossing the bridge feel like its story needs to be fully told – before any changes begin.
The four-lane bridge is a landmark and treasure, they say. Built in 1919 by the Bethlehem Steel Bridge Corporation, it’s one of the nation’s last functional “bascule bridges,” in which part of the bridge pivots upward to allow the canal traffic to move through. (For your inner engineer, it’s worth knowing that the St. Claude bridge is even a rarity within the bascule genre: it’s what’s known as a “Strauss trunnion bascule bridge with a truss superstructure.” In layman’s terms, that means that the bridge goes up by rotating on fixed axles called “trunnions,”, and uses a triangular “truss” structure to distribute weight.)
But as anyone who travels this bridge regularly can tell you, this landmark is a beloved community sight, an essential connector to the city, and high ground during the worst storms to hit this city.
To the Lower 9 and to residents of St. Bernard Parish, the bridge is the most reliable connection to the city of New Orleans, a point proven over the past few months, as the Judge William Seeber bridge over North Claiborne Avenue has been closed for repairs, leaving the St. Claude Bridge stacked with cars for hours at a time.
Bridge as neighborhood icon
Crossing this historic bridge can also be a celebration, like “walking on history,” said City Councilmember Oliver Thomas, a Lower 9 native. “When you’re walking with your family and friends, with the brass band blowing and the feet moving, that bridge doesn’t feel like concrete and steel anymore,” he said. “It feels like a pathway of culture, and resilience.”
There is a tangible shift in energy when a second line reaches the bridge, said Treme resident Shakur Trammel. For him, crossing the bridge transforms the “troubled waters” in his life, difficult things he wants to confront and overcome.
“It’s a cathartic moment,” Trammel said. As he crosses, he brings energy to the bridge. And then it gives something back. “The bridge does have a soul, if you will.”
Every year, as part of its annual parade route, the Original CTC Steppers social aid and pleasure club starts its parades in the Upper 9th Ward and then travels the bridge to the Lower 9, “bringing everyone home,” said Club President Walter “Trigga Blakk” Fair, 35, who has fond memories dating back to his childhood, when his family would go over the bridge to visit his great-grandparents in the Lower 9. Those crossings are true joy “like getting ready for a pep rally,” Fair said, recalling his first experience traversing the bridge with the CTC Steppers in 2004.
“When we get to the bridge, we start singing a song, ‘How you gonna cross that water?’” Fair said. “Basically telling people we want y’all to dance, have a good time, have fun crossing the water, because we’re taking the second line home where we’re from.”
Safer Ground
In 1965, after Hurricane Betsy, President Lyndon B. Johnson traveled down St. Claude, walking the bridge as he spoke with survivors like 74-year-old Willie Marshall, then a resident of the avenue who had ridden out the storm in a flooded home with his family, he told the president.
Like the others who gathered there, Marshall had sought out the bridge for safety. Residents’ loyalty to the bridge was strengthened after Hurricanes Betsy and Katrina, when its iron span has served as a landing area for boats carrying Lower 9th Ward flood survivors, to connect them with the higher ground on the other side of the bridge.
In 2005, Robert Green, 70, was clinging to his unmoored roof when he heard a bass boat in the distance. He and his family yelled and threw rocks to get the boat’s attention. They saw the boat travel back and forth across Jourdan Avenue countless times, ferrying stranded other Lower 9 residents to safety.
Green and his family had floated a few blocks down Tennessee Street on the roof of his house in the wee hours of August 29, 2005, after the catastrophic Jourdan Avenue levee break spilled more than 20 feet of water onto his block as Hurricane Katrina approached from the Gulf of Mexico. One of his granddaughters fell into the floodwaters and disappeared; his elderly mom died later that night on the roof of his unmoored house, as the family huddled together, holding on for dear life.
They waited and shouted from the roof until the boat finally arrived. At its helm was Earnest “All Night Shorty” Edwards, a beloved neighbor who was like an uncle to Green. Edwards rescued Green’s family and took them to the Seeber/Claiborne Bridge, then shuttled them a second time to the St. Claude Bridge where National Guard rescue operations were stationed. After Edwards navigated through downed power lines and fallen trees to get to safety, the family disembarked onto the St. Claude Bridge and climbed onto a military vehicle that took them to the Superdome, the city’s shelter of last resort.
During Betsy, as during Katrina, the bridges were the highest points, where people sought refuge.
To those who live nearby, those tragedies and the rescues are embedded in the bridges. In the aftermath of Katrina, as Thomas stood alongside the now 106-year-old Saint Claude Bridge, Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens asked him why people would want to return to the Lower 9th Ward. Thomas took a long look at the bridge and was reminded of all the deep history that came behind it. “Because we always do,” he said.
Hero in a hat and a bass boat
Edwards’ legacy of heroism spans decades: he first risked his life to rescue his neighbors during Hurricane Betsy 60 years ago, in 1965. Because of his experience with Betsy, Edwards prepared his boat for Katrina, Green said. “He knew from Betsy that people were going to need to be rescued, and he instinctively pulled his 18-wheeler high onto the Claiborne Bridge with the boat on the trailer, and then he put the boat in the water and started rescuing people,” Green said.
In 1965, one of the hundreds of neighbors saved by Edwards was 8-year-old Thomas.
In 2005, Thomas followed Edwards’ example by becoming a rescuer himself, going in and out of the toxic water to rescue stranded people. Edwards’ rescue of him and his family had imprinted a message within him: that Lower 9 neighbors save each other.
“That’s what we do,” Thomas said.
The isolated Lower 9th Ward needed to rescue itself after those landmark storms, because help didn’t come fast enough. Even the National Guard stationed on the St. Claude Bridge had no working cell service or radios, so the troops waited on orders that never came. But Edwards didn’t wait. He risked his life in treacherous waters to save others, Green said.
To mark Edwards’ passing last year, Thomas authored a ceremonial City Council proclamation honoring his rescuer’s sacrifice and his “courageous and selfless actions in rescuing over 200 residents of the Lower 9th Ward” in the city’s official record.
Edwards’ daughter, Melissa “Mook” Edwards, felt mixed emotions to see the proclamation and hear the outpouring of stories from their neighbors. “I felt like it should have been done while he was alive,” she said. “Because he deserved it.”
And yet, Edwards certainly felt the love from the Lower 9 as he lived, said daughter Regina Edwards, describing how he was widely seen as a hero, to the point where younger men started wearing hats and caps in honor of her dad, who rarely left the house without something on his head.
When people talked about his rescues, he’d stay quiet. “He did what he had to do,” she said. He knew people were out there stranded, and that was all he needed to know. “My daddy loved people,” Regina Edwards said.
The Threat
Today, three St. Claude Avenue homes face displacement if the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers moves forward with its long-threatened expansion to the Industrial Canal’s navigation lock that connects the Industrial Canal to the Mississippi River. Corps documents describe it as “aging and inefficient.”
Critics have attacked the lock replacement plan because the Corps’ documentation for the project is 25 years old and because the plan includes a sweeping scope of destruction and delays. Neighbors say that the gain for industry isn’t worth the toll it will take on the neighborhood. “They’re willing to risk encroaching on a community,” Oliver Thomas said, “because those American lives are not as valuable as the interest in capital yield that’s going to go to a few people.”
Even by industry standards, the bridge may not be worth building, critics say, noting that even the most updated report shows a benefit-cost ratio (BCR) of just 1.03 – meaning that the project’s benefits are barely more than its costs. While the minimum requirement for federal funding is a BCR of 1.0, it’s rare for projects under 2.5 to be considered, according to Congressional testimony about economic evaluations of Army Corps projects.
The costs are high, concede Army Corps officials. But, they say, the project’s $4.6 billion cost projections are due to inflation, “uncontrollable costs,” project-scope refinements, and an adjusted sequencing schedule that would allow them to keep the existing St. Claude Bridge open while building the new bridge, to reduce the impacts on residents and commuters during the estimated 14-year process.
“While this adds time and thus cost, it also lessens prolonged bridge closures and traffic disruptions,” Matt Roe, USACE Public Affairs Specialist wrote, noting that two mitigation projects will be implemented, totaling $164 million in cost: a Community Impact Mitigation Plan (CIMP) and a Transportation Mitigation Program (TMP). Even Congress recognized that this spot needed more attention. Because neither requirement is standard for navigational projects, Roe wrote in an email.
“They are specific congressional authorizations tailored to this location and its history,” Roe said.
Stokes questions whether the benefit-to-cost calculations include all of the potential negative impacts of the plan. The group The Canal Will Kill, which was formed to oppose the project, would include concerns like increased flood risks, exposure to toxic sediments, and decreased home values. Others would include the cost of rerouted traffic and of local businesses whose customers decline, because they are hampered by a construction zone for 14 years.
As part of its expansion plans, the Army Corps must assess and report potential impacts to the neighborhood’s historic sites and structures, like the St. Claude Bridge. It’s all part of a mandatory federal historic-documentation procedure called a Section 106 process.
In a December 2024 letter to the Army Corps, the Louisiana Landmark Society requested an extension to the Section 106 process for this project. The extension is particularly important because the project’s last Section 106 Memorandum of Agreement was signed 25 years ago, in 2000, the letter states. That’s five years prior to the catastrophic impacts of the city’s levee breaks, which flooded 80% of the city in the disaster commonly referred to as Katrina.
To Stokes, it makes no sense to document what is historic or significant in the 9th Ward area without considering the ways that the disaster altered the landscape. Or, as the letter stated: “These changes, among many others, dramatically alter the context of the original project parameters, rendering previous assessments potentially obsolete.”
The documentation also misses cultural moments that are hard to convey in engineering or bureaucratic terms. The bridge is precious to those around it, in a palpable way, said Shakur Trammel, who wishes that the Corps would consider the bridge’s value to the city’s culture.
He fondly recalled the times that he’s danced across the bridge with a full social aid and pleasure club followed by thousands of New Orleanians celebrating a Sunday afternoon in the Lower 9. “I’m a better person, a better man, because I get to experience that on the St. Claude Bridge,” Trammel said.
This article originally published in the September 1, 2025 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.