About Larz Anderson Bridge

It's not surprising that everyone calls the bridge "Larz Anderson"--even the Harvard Allston website and Shand-Tucci's "Harvard University, An Architectural Tour" have it wrong. But the historical record is clear:

"The Anderson Memorial Bridge replaces the inadequate, old wooden draw bridge which for many years had marked the former condition of the banks of Charles River. The new bridge was made possible by the gift of the Honorable Larz Anderson as a memorial to his father, a gallant general of the United States Army, Nicholas Longworth Anderson, renowned for his part in the Civil War, and by legislation which provided that the bridge 'be built, without a draw, by this Board...'" (Metropolitan Park Commission annual report, 1913, p. 7).

Shand-Tucci gives a short description of the bridge:

"In that splendid bridge one sees a distinctive architectural mode originally adopted for Harvard athletic facilities, a mode characterized by the distinctive use of concrete-wall fields dressed with red brick decorative trim...Wheelwright endowed the Anderson Bridge not only with the concrete and brick decorative scheme, but with extraordinary and, indeed, fully sculptural ornamental gilded mantlings, detail as flamboyant but infinitely more stylish that that of the [Weld] boathouse. This mantling surmounts the entrance piers at both ends of the bridge and was once partnered by gilded street lamps, which ought to be restored.... The mantling was modeled by no less than Johannes Kirchmayer, one of the leading American architectural sculptors of the period. Its richness is perhaps explained by the design concept of the structure: 'May this bridge,' declares a bronze plaque on the Cambridge side, 'connecting the College Yard and playing fields of Harvard, be an ever present reminder to students passing over it of loyalty to country and Alma Mater' "
(pp. 94-95).