Dispatches From The Northside: 5th Street Bridge
“Stupid traffic! Ever since the bridge opened…” growled Mook as she slammed down her Double Dutch jump ropes and moved to the side of the road to allow another car to travel north down 5th Street.
Pudgy, multi-pigtailed, and fierce, the 9-year-old north side resident has a lot in common with her neighbors several blocks south, who blame commuting PPD employees for turning their once quiet street into a replica of the 3rd Street Speedway.
The bridge linking 5th between Red Cross and Brunswick came down in the 1970’s to make way for plans to pave the Martin Luther King Parkway down the old railroad line. The DOT scratched that plan, but long after the bridge was gone.
To some this patch of negative space became just another line between black and white, while to others play, parking and peace grew out of the gap.
Former Wilmington Mayor Harper Peterson started pushing city leaders back in 2002 into rebuilding the bridge. There was resistance, since residents living near the former Boney Bridge had long adapted to the loss and adjusted to the dead end road. A November 2002 article in the Star-News reports that Peterson and city council member Jason Thompson agreed that the bridge needed to be built.
And so it was. It opened in the spring of 2005, changing its name to the Thelma Bull Bridge.
Peter Brown went to school with Thelma Bull’s son. He says she was an activist who lived on the Northside around 6th and Harnett. He says she was an advocate for those she thought were being victimized in the neighborhood. During segregation, she fought for the kids to get better school books, instead of the rough and tattered hand me down books often left for the black schools.
Mook and the southern 5th Street residents aside, the northern end of 5th Street never turned out to be the busy road many feared. The full impact, though, won’t be felt until the scores of people move into the new Taylor Homes condos and apartments being built where 5th Street ends. Stay tuned …
Is that the little bridge shown north of Isabelle Holmes, Catherine? Right here?:
Google maps
You mean the rail bridge over the Cape Fear River? There ain’t nothing little about that!!!! Even though I haven’t been by there recently, I’m pretty sure the bridge she is talking about goes over the old Atlantic Coast Line railbed as seen here:
http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&q=501+Red+Cross+St,+Wilmington,+NC+28401,+USA&ll=34.243306,-77.944028&spn=0.002239,0.005236&t=h&z=18
only this satellite image is older than the bridge, so it’s not shown. I have noticed that some of the images Google uses are nearly ten years old.
See, that’s how little I know about the B.A.D
Thanks, Susan.
The bridge runs over the old railroad tracks that now dead end into Plantation’s parking lot.
If anyone wants to experience it, they can take 3rd Street to Red Cross to 5th and turn left heading north (away from official “historic downtown Wilmington”).
Hope that helps.
If you look at this photo, you’ll see where the railroad track - well, phantom track since it’s no longer there - slices across 5th. A newer photo would have shown the bridge.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=5th+Avenue+and+Red+Cross+Wilmington,+NC&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=25.34618,58.623047&ie=UTF8&ll=34.243027,-77.943964&spn=0.006439,0.014312&t=h&z=16
Y’all seriously need to explore the north side, it’s quite lovely.
btw, the photos of New Hanover County used by Google Maps were flown in January of 2006.
oops … nevermind, not correct. they are older.
google used to use the same photos I use at work, which are the jan 06 ones from the county; these are definitely older, since mayfaire isn’t even built yet.