Todd Wilson spent his childhood drawing and snapping pictures of Pittsburgh’s many bridges.
“I have photos dating back to when I was six years old,” Wilson told PA Local.
The fascination, encouraged by his photographer father and art teacher mother, was formative. Wilson now works in civil engineering, and co-wrote a book on Pittsburgh’s bridges in 2015.
“With Western Pennsylvania [having] all of these deep valleys and so much infrastructure competing for space: roads perched on the sides of hills, bridges built where they probably shouldn’t be, the visual spectacle of being on the hilltop looking down at the city,” Wilson said, “it definitely made me very excited about Pittsburgh.”
Bridge photography remains a big part of Wilson’s life. He travels the world taking photos of the structures, and has visited all 50 states and around 30 countries to do so, he said.
The images and videos he snaps locally land on @pghbridges, an Instagram account that’s amassed around 34,000 followers since he started it in 2020. (It “complements” but is “completely separate” from his friend Bruce Cridlebaugh’s website pghbridges.com, Wilson said.)
Wilson’s photography captures what he calls the “intentionally unique and structurally beautiful design” of Pittsburgh’s bridges. Their stylishness is a result of an early-20th-century city art commission that “refused to approve” a specific utilitarian type of metal bridge, Wilson explained, which forced engineers to get creative with their blueprints.
“They pulled a lot of designs from Europe. Some designs were the first of their kind in America, but they were based on European designs,” he said. “And all of the bridges were designed so if you’re crossing the bridge, you could see out. You could see the city. You could see the river.”
PA Local recently spoke with Wilson about his photography, Pennsylvania’s coolest bridges, and whether Pittsburgh actually has more bridges than anywhere else. (You’ll have to read to the end to find out.)
Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
PA Local: How did Pittsburgh become so well-known for its bridges?
Todd Wilson: Part of it is just the topography of being the city of three rivers — with those rivers being in valleys, and then all of the streams intersecting the rivers in valleys, so you needed a lot of high-profile bridges kind of framing the skyline, but then so many other bridges everywhere else that the density of bridges became really a defining feature of the city.
What’s the appeal for you in photographing bridges?
The visual interest has always been something. In general, I’m just somebody who’s very stimulated by art and architecture, engineering. So just seeing these really intricate and really well-designed structures [is] really exciting.
Another thing that I didn’t realize until later is that my great-grandfather was a bridge builder. So, it was just funny later on in life realizing, “Oh, maybe you like these bridges because your great-grandfather built them.”
When you look at a bridge, what are some of the first things that you notice about it? What are you focusing on capturing in your pictures?
Really, it’s the structural design. The more that you know about something, the more that you want to learn even more. The more that I’d look at a bridge, it just goes from being a typical structure to starting to appreciate all of the various details about the structure: the design, the materials.
For example, if a bridge is a metal truss bridge built in the late 1800s, you can tell which company built it based on little design details. Or if that bridge was then built in say, the 1930s, a lot of those bridges were built by the Pennsylvania State Highway Department, and they were standardized, so you could see this exact design here in this part of the state, and then that exact same design somewhere else, and somewhere else. But then there might be minor details by year. You can generally date a bridge just by looking at it.
What about your bridge photos do you think resonates with a local audience?
I think what really gets overlooked when it comes to bridges, is that bridges are used by everybody. It’s the one thing that does not discriminate.
Say for example, you have a skyscraper or a beautiful building. Well, people might like the skyscraper, but it's not like everybody can just go into the skyscraper, right? Or a fancy house. Or even something where it's maybe open to the public, but you have to buy a ticket. But with a bridge, the point is to be a civic structure for everybody to use.
You might not intentionally go and say, “I’m going to go look at this bridge for fun,” but it’s always kind of in your mind when you’re crossing a certain bridge. You can think about life, and you can think about memories on a bridge. Whether you like the bridge, or you’re scared of the bridge, or your family took you fishing on the bridge, or who knows, right? It just becomes something that’s just like part of everybody.
Do you have a favorite Pittsburgh bridge, past or present?
My top three are the Smithfield Street Bridge, the 16th Street Bridge, and the McKees Rocks Bridge.
With the Smithfield Street Bridge, it’s the oldest river bridge in Pittsburgh. It’s an incredible lenticular truss from the 1880s. It was designed by a really prominent engineer, but it has these grand castle-like portals. It has a really, really interesting history.
The 16th Street Bridge, also known as the David McCullough Bridge, was the first [major] arch bridge in Pittsburgh. That bridge is this fantastic architectural piece. It’s modeled after a bridge in Cologne. It has sculptures that are modeled after a fountain in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris.