Bulaq Bridge

Several of my articles on Garden City were plagiarized word for word by novelist MEKKAWI SAID (winner of the Egyptian State price for literature!!!!) and re-published under his own name in a three-part series in El-Masry El-Youm daily in September 2015. Cheers to our "talented" literature prize awardee. Your pain his gain !!! Its designer did not jump from it and contrary to local parable the landmark Abou al-Ela Bridge linking Gezira Island to Boulac used to open daily for Nile traffic from 12:00 to 12:45 and again from 15:00 to 15:45. No openings on Sundays. The ornate span-type metal Boulac Bridge (susbequently renamed Fouad Bridge and later Abou al-Ela) did however stop opening several years after its inauguration but that had more to do with lack of proper maintenance rather than faulty engineering. As for the romanticized legend which claims Alexander-Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923) designed this bridge and later took his own life when it failed to open... not true!! If for consolation alone, Eiffel is however the author of the suspended mini-bridge gracing the Giza Zoo, which is still there today although not open to the public for safety reasons. If anyone is to be credited for this landmark Nile crossing it should be American engineer William Donald Scherzer. Not only did his Chicago firm design Boulac Bridge, but it was Scherzer who invented its ingenius rolling (bascules) and locking mechanism used for opening it to fluvial traffic. As for the bridge's French connection, that was limited to the manufacturing of steel girders by the well-known company of Five-Lilles, and to the steel beams which produced by the famous French conglomerate Schneider. The Scherzer bridge building was chosen at the suggestion of a commission charged with the examination of the tenders for the construction of Cairo's new river crossing. The commission's recommendations were submitted in 1908 to the adjudication committee headed by a Mr. Perry, the then-Undersecretary of State for Towns & Buildings. In turn, Perry referred the report to another commission made up of Messrs. Webb, Undersecretary of State for Irrigation; Macauley Bey, General Manager of the State Railways; and Mr. Holt, Sub-Director of the Cairo Polytechnic School. Erecting the 274.5 m. long and 20 m. wide bridge was no easy feat. Construction took three and a half years with the foundations laid at 18 meters below sea level (33 m. below Nile level). In the pre-High Dam days, the portion of the Nile that ran through Egypt was a potent body of moving water, its strong currents and giant swirls, especially during high flood, causing serious challenges to bridge constructors. Several piers, large girders and wide spans had to be put in place before the bridge could be opened for business. In sharp contrast to the pomp and ceremony surrounding the inaugurations of Cairo's older bridges or the multiple celebrations at the opening of the Aswan and Qena Reservoirs when the Khedive and his guest, the Duke of Connaught, attended, Boulac Bridge was quietly opened to the public in July 1912. Summers in Cairo were hot and the entire government had moved to Alexandria the previous April. Khedive Abbas Hilmi II (r. 1892-1914) was summering in Europe with his Hungarian wife and Lord Kitchener, Egypt's de facto ruler was attending an important meeting in Malta. It was left to Ismail Sirry Pasha, the Minister of Public Works, to cut the ribbon on their behalf. A month later, on August 18, 1912, Cairo's press corps was entertained to a magnificent champagne breakfast buffet at the Giza tramway station courtesy of Fritz de Lancker, the director of the Cairo Tramways Company which had partially financed the Boulac Bridge. Together, they celebrated the launch of the new "Ataba al-Khadra - Pyramids" tram route No. 3 by way of Boulac and Zamalek bridges. Since the Belgian-owned Tramway Company generated its own electrical supply for the running of the trams, it was from its power plant in Boul