Seven bridges span wide Dnipro River.
In the early 20th century, French poet Guillaume Apollinaire wrote probably the most famous poem about a bridge. Called “The Mirabeau Bridge,” he wrote:
“The days the weeks pass by beyond our ken;
“Neither time past
“Nor love comes back again
“Under the Mirabeau Bridge there flows the Seine.”
Bridges, like all witnesses to history, can tell lots of stories.
Apart from Mirabeau Bridge, there are about 40 bridges over the Seine River in Paris. About 300 bridges were built in the historic part of Saint Petersburg, the northern former capital of Russia. In Kyiv, there are only seven bridges over the Dnipro River. But it’s not at all surprising, according to Mykhaylo Kalnytsky, a Kyiv historian who has been studying city bridges for the last 25 years.
“How can you compare the Seine, Neva and Dnipro?” he mused. “The Dnipro is much wider! Before it was dammed at the beginning of the 20th century, the river stream was even wider and much stronger. For centuries it was impossible to build a stationary bridge over this powerful river.”
Throughout Kyiv’s history, building a bridge has always been a complicated endeavor. A bridge project had to be a real engineering masterpiece to be realized. Temporary floating bridges existed in Kyiv since 1115, according to historical evidence. Almost every spring such temporary wooden bridges would float away once the ice drift began.
According to Mykola Nikiforovsky (1845-1910), Kyivans used to call this time of year “floater drift” and tried to catch the bridges in order to use them for construction materials. When the river froze in winter, it was also common to cross the Dnipro on ice. Stationary bridges appeared in Kyiv only in the middle of the 19th century. The first two were the Nicholas Chain Bridge and the Struve Railroad Bridge. Neither survived, however.
Nicholas Chain Bridge – Metro Bridge
Built in 1853, it was the first stationary bridge over the Dnipro. With a length of 776 meters, it was one of the longest bridges at the time. The chain bridge and Dnipro hills served as a greeting card for almost 70 years. For those who arrived to the ancient city from the left bank, Chain Bridge was like the main gate, a kind of a triumphal arch. Its location is close to where the modern Metro Bridge is now. One of its ends was in modern-day Hydropark; the other was several meters to the left of Metro Bridge, looking from the left bank.
“If you walk on Metro Bridge today, closer to Hydropark, and look into the water, it is still possible to see a shallow and the remains of one of the five pillars on which the old bridge stood,” Kalnytsky said. “Over each pillar, an arch with two towers in English gothic style was built. Chains were the most important element of the construction. They were so massive that each link weighed 192 kilograms. Chains were linked with the bridge floor, went up through the towers, and then fixed to the bridge floor again, and so on. In such a manner, the chains held the bridge. When in 1920 Polish troops blew up the chains, the whole bridge collapsed.”
For years, writers have been creating novels about the Chain Bridge, while common folk made up legends. According to one of them, the whole concept behind Kyiv’s Chain Bridge was “stolen” by Americans when, in 1883, they built the Brooklyn Bridge over the East River in New York.
The two bridges really have something in common. Both are suspension bridges. Their decks are hung below suspension cables or chains on vertical suspenders. Both were designed with Gothic-style elements, and were exceptionally long for their time. Nicholas Chain Bridge was named after Russian tsar Nicholas I and was the longest six-span bridge in Europe. The three-span Brooklyn Bridge built 30 years later was then the longest in the world.
Anyway, the Brooklyn Bridge became an iconic part of the New York City skyline, just as the Chain Bridge had been in Kyiv. Tolls were also charged in Kyiv to keep the bridge in good condition, including six kopecks for moving a cow across the span and nine for horses.
After the bridge was blown up in 1920, it was significantly changed and restored in 1925 under the name of Yevheniya Bosh Bridge.
In 1941, it was demolished by retreating Soviet troops and never restored again. Metro Bridge was built in its place in 1965.
Struve Railroad Bridge – Darnytsky Railroad Bridge
The second stationary bridge in Kyiv was built in 1870. It was a railroad bridge designed and constructed by Amand Struve, a prominent engineer, inventor of the first electric tram in the Russian Empire that started running in Kyiv in 1892. Over one kilometer in length, with twelve spans, the Struve Bridge was the longest railroad bridge in Europe at that time. It was almost as long as Kyiv’s main street, Khreshchatyk.
Struve was the first in the Russian Empire to use the caisson method of laying foundation. Later Brooklyn Bridge was built in the same manner. New technology allowed to avoid enclosing a part of the river as it was done before, but instead of sinking a metal box, or caisson, in the river, they pumped the water out of it and started working inside.
But just as the Nicholas Bridge, the Struve Bridge was blown up in 1920 by retreating Polish troops. The bridge was actually rebuilt and blown up twice again after that. It was destroyed by the Nazi troops during World War II. In record time, Kyivans built a temporary wooden bridge on the same site. Stationary Darnytsky Railroad Bridge was built in 1949 and still remains in operation.
Petrivsky Bridge
The second railroad bridge to be built in Kyiv (after the Struve one) was constructed in 1929 and was known as Podilsky or Petrivsky Bridge at that time. Like other bridges it was blown up during the Second World War but luckily it wasn’t heavily damaged. In 1944, it was rebuilt. Petrivksy Railroad Bridge is the oldest bridge in Kyiv that has remained intact until this day, though it underwent reconstruction.
Paton Bridge
A creation of the well-known Soviet engineer Yevhen Paton, Paton Bridge is the longest bridge over the Dnipro. Built in 1953, the 1,543-meter-long bridge was the first fully-welded bridge of such length in the world and the longest existing bridge in Europe at the time.
Paton, who was 83 at the time, personally took part in the design and construction of the bridge. He died in the same year as construction was completed. Paton was the first in the world to found a research institute of electric welding in 1934, which has created over more than 100 welded bridges. Today his institute is part of the National Academy of Science and his 91-year-old son, Borys, has presides over the Academy for the last 47 years.
Park Pedestrian Bridge
The next bridge to appear in Kyiv in 1957 was and still remains the only pedestrian bridge over the Dnipro. It connects the right bank with the beach and park area on Trukhaniv Island. Architect Oleksiy Zavarov designed the 439-meter bridge using same technology as had been used for the Nicholas Chain Bridge, but used metal chords instead of chains to suspend the bridge.
Historian Kalnytsky said that the construction of the bridge was undertaken when there was a deficit in building materials, so the architect had to fight with city authorities for almost every kilogram of metal. Legend has it that Zavarov bet on a case of champagne with one well known engineer that he will finish the bridge anyway. He won the bet.
Moskovsky Bridge
Kyiv’s Moskovsky Bridge has the longest – 300 meter – beam span between pillars. It is supported by steel cables, which are fixed to the 115 meter pylons. This type of bridge is called cable-stayed.
Moskovsky Bridge was, arguably, the first cable-stayed bridge in the Soviet Union, without taking into account one of the bridges in Moscow where this technology was partially used. The length of Moskovsky Bridge is about 700 meters. Another part of the bridge spans across the Desionka, Dnipro’s tributary.
Pivdenny Bridge
The last bridge that was built over the Dnipro fairway dates back to 1990. It was the second metro bridge in Kyiv, in the south of the city, which also serves road traffic to some of the most populated residential areas, and to the highway leading to Kyiv’s main airport, Boryspil.
Just like Moskovsky Bridge, it was engineered by Georgiy Fuks. It connected the right bank with the left bank area of Kyiv now known as Kharkivsky district.
Since Ukraine gained its independence in 1991, zero new bridges over the main Dnipro stream have been opened. Today, the construction of a new Darnytsky Railroad Bridge is close to completion. The new bridge span is only several meters from the existing one.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Faryna can be reached at [email protected].
