Old-Fashioned Bridge Pull

Saturday, May 24, 2008

The community celebrated history in the making at The Bascom’s Old-Fashioned Bridge Pull. On Saturday, May 24, the art center held a community celebration at the site of its new campus, on Oak Street, where a team of oxen pulled and helped install one of the nation’s oldest covered bridges, The Bagley Covered Bridge, into place over the creek.

Scores of people dropped by to meet Arnold Graton, master bridge wright of the legendary Graton family, who is heading up the operation. Big, wooden, handcrafted pegs called trunnels, which hold the bridge together, went into the bridge by hand. No steel fasteners have been used in this bridge; it is all wood.

When fully complete later this summer, the bridge will serve as the signature entrance to The Bascom’s new center for the visual arts. It will be called the Will Henry Stevens Bridge in honor of the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts, and it is a gift from Dorothy and Jimmy Coleman and Dian and Tom Winingder.