The New Orleans Bridge That Has Spanned Bayou St. John for More Than a Century

Whether you call it Magnolia Bridge, Cabrini Bridge, Bayou Bridge, or Old Bayou Bridge, this is the story of the beautiful blue structure that has spanned Bayou St. John and several generations of Louisiana residents.

If you spend time around Bayou St. John, you most likely have noticed Magnolia Bridge. Blue and beautiful, it’s also sometimes known as “Cabrini Bridge,” though, in the past, it’s gone by “Bayou Bridge” and “Old Bayou Bridge.”

This structure, however, isn’t simply a pretty landmark. It’s a historic treasure spanning three centuries. In this article, we dig into Magnolia Bridge’s unique history.

19th-century infrastructure

Walk to the middle of Magnolia Bridge. It feels nice on a warm, Autumn day as a breeze sweeps across your cheeks. If you’re facing Cabrini High School, turn your head to your right. Bayou St. John curves around a band where downtown skyscrapers poke out behind ancient Spanish moss-laden oak trees.

Now look in the other direction, toward City Park and Lake Pontchartrain. That’s where our bridge’s story begins.

In the late-1800s, the bridge you’re standing on was originally erected on Esplanade Avenue, also over Bayou St. John and less than a quarter-mile from where it currently rests. It’s confusing, but here’s what we know:

The current Magnolia Bridge’s location — between Cabrini High School on one bank, and Hardin Drive on the other — used to be occupied by a different footbridge. On the school’s side of the bayou, there was a picnic area called, “Magnolia Gardens” (though it was sometimes referred to as “Southern Park.” In the 20 years between 1890 and 1910, the park often hosted popular band performances. Because of the bridge’s proximity to Magnolia Gardens, it was also sometimes referred to as Magnolia Bridge, as was the case in this amazing article about a duel-gone-wrong.

But that’s not our bridge. It simply occupied the location we’re now talking about. 

As mentioned above, the bridge on which this article focuses, which we now call Magnolia Bridge (when we’re not calling it Cabrini Bridge), was built on Esplanade Avenue and was frequently called Bayou Bridge or, eventually, Old Bayou Bridge. This bridge supported one set of streetcar tracks, making it accessible to public transportation, but also to pedestrians, horse-drawn carriages, and automobiles.

(Note: There was a third “Magnolia Bridge” that crossed what was formerly the New Basin Canal at Magnolia Street, near what is currently the Smoothie King Center. That canal was functional from the 1830s through the 1940s, and the bridge was a launching point for freight and passenger ships, as well as the site of hundreds of 19th and 20th-century murders. But this is a story — and a bridge — for another day. Now, back to our current Magnolia Bridge.)

A game of musical bridges

In 1906, with both streetcar and automobile traffic increasing, some city officials were concerned that our aging, one-lane, wooden structure wasn’t enough. That was especially true because the Canal-Esplanade streetcar line — which crossed the bayou using this Esplanade Avenue bridge — was switching to heavier cars.

The paper reported the testimony of local expert and member of the Park Commission, Mr. A. Blais, to the Streets and Land Committee:

“He had even complained of the use of this bridge by the lighter cars, but now that the great, heavy cars had been put on the Belt Line, these cars were frequently taxed to carry 100 persons at a time over that bridge. He believed that the foundations at the ends of the bridge would give way one day when a car was upon the bridge and good-by for everyone who was in the car, for they would be screened in without the least possible chance of getting out of a window. If one of those large cars of the Company should go through that bridge into the bayou no one could escape except possibly some on the back platform – they would be drowned like rats in a trap.”

It was decided a steel bridge, wide and strong enough to hold a double streetcar track (basically, to allow for easier two-way traffic) should replace what Blais called our old “menace.” But, before old Bayou Bridge could be demolished, the city chose to move the bridge down the bayou to Grand Route St. John. 

At the time, Bayou St. John was part of the Old Basin Canal (aka the Carondelet Canal), a waterway that hosted frequent shipping traffic. Even though Bayou Bridge rotated at its center — turning itself parallel to the bayou so ships could pass on either side — the severe bend in the bayou at Grand Route St. John would make navigation difficult, prompting the Canal Navigation Company to reject the city’s proposal to move Bayou Bridge there.

But a compromise was found right here at Harding Drive where our blue bridge now stands. Remember, this was the site of that old pedestrian bridge — which had since been widened to allow for carriage traffic — near Magnolia Park.

The plan was to destroy that smallest bridge (the former Magnolia Bridge that had been there at the time of the aforementioned duel), then to blow up its foundation on each bank of Bayou St. John. Bayou Bridge would be lifted from its foundation at Esplanade Avenue, placed on a barge and floated down the waterway to its current location, where it would be re-erected. A new, stronger bridge would be placed at Esplanade Avenue, and everyone would be happy.

The plan went swimmingly *wink*, at least for our bridge. Bayou Bridge was successfully relocated from Esplanade Avenue and, at some point, took on the name we call it today: Magnolia Bridge (but also, sometimes, Cabrini Bridge).

A May 19, 1909 article from the Times-Picayune documented that the addition of the new, stronger, steel bridge at Esplanade Avenue didn’t go as well:

“With a terrific crash, the span of the steel bascale trunnion bridge in the course of construction at the Esplanade Street end, crossing Bayou St. John, snapped in twain, and the heavy superstructure fell into the bayou, effectually closing navigation of the waterway for some time to come. Five men were injured, one of them, Frank Cunningham, fatally.”

Fortunately, however, our “menace” survived.

A bridge to the modern era

Though the Esplanade Avenue bridge met its demise, Magnolia Bridge was safe and sound. For the next few decades, I don’t believe Magnolia Bridge was used for streetcar traffic, though furious residents clamored for it every time something went wrong with the replacement bridge on Esplanade Avenue.

In a January 2, 1911 edition of the Times-Picayune, one streetcar passenger asks sarcastically when they learn the Esplanade Avenue bridge is stuck in the “up” position, “Well, how am I to get across Bayou St. John to board a Canal belt car? I suppose it’s up to me to rent a skiff or motorboat?”

The conductor fought sarcasm with kindness by pleasantly informing the frustrated passenger that it would only be a few blocks walk to cross the Magnolia Street bridge and link up with the streetcar on the other side.

In the 1920s, the Old Basin Canal was closed to shipping, which meant Bayou St. John’s primary purpose would now be recreation. In 1936, during the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration stabilized and restored Magnolia Bridge, this time without the ability to rotate for passing ships.

Next time you’re on Magnolia Bridge, watch cars drive up and down Moss Street, vanishing around a bend on their way to Esplanade Avenue, or turning onto Grand Route St. John. Imagine what it would have been like for a queue of old automobiles on each side of the bridge as they waited their turn to cross the narrow structure.

Over the next three decades, the bridge fell back into disrepair. In 1971, it was closed to vehicular traffic because of safety concerns, and in April 1972, a group of schoolchildren were walking across the bridge when a small girl fell through, into a space where two wooden boards were missing. 

(In the bridge’s defense, what in the world was she looking at? This is way before we were all looking down at our cellphones!) Luckily, her friends were able to pull her back up onto the bridge, and — as the girl’s parents wrote in a strongly-worded letter to the Editor of the Times-Picayune — “crisis was averted.”

Somehow, even after that near-disaster, Magnolia Bridge wasn’t restored again until 1989.

Renovated for the future

Thirty years later — in 2018/19 — it was time for another repair. This one took an entire year and cost $1.3 Million. But for many New Orleanians, it was money well-spent, because our city loves its bayou and loves its bridge.

A few months before the rehabilitation project began, then-City Councilmember, Susan Guidry, told The Advocate, “It’s really the only waterway we have within the city that draws people to its banks to use, whether its families having picnics or the festivals we now have there…For those of us who like to walk, run and bicycle, it connects our neighborhoods.”

Standing on the bridge and watching the bayou extend toward Lake Pontchartrain, eventually eventually linking to the Gulf of Mexico, we’re reminded this waterway connects us to the rest of the world.

But landmarks like Magnolia Bridge don’t just connect us across space, they also connect us across time. As a woman pushes her baby in a stroller across the bridge’s recently repaired surface, it’s fun to imagine how more than 120 years of New Orleanians have special Magnolia Bridge moments of their own: from first dates and first kisses; to birthday parties and crawfish boils; to thoughtful strolls and quiet moments.