The Cowen Park Bridge is a reinforced concrete

arch bridge An arch bridge is a bridge with abutments at each end shaped as a curved arch. Arch bridges work by transferring the weight of the bridge and its structural load, loads partially into a horizontal thrust restrained by the abutments at either si ...

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

Washington Washington most commonly refers to: * George Washington (1732–1799), the first president of the United States * Washington (state), a state in the Pacific Northwest of the United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A ...

. The bridge has a length of and carries 15th Avenue NE across a ravine in the

Cowen Park Ravenna Park and Cowen Park comprise a single contiguous recreation and green space between the Ravenna and University District neighborhoods of Seattle, Washington in the United States. These public parks encompass the ravine with a maximum dep ...

. The bridges acts as a dividing line in the Ravenna-Cowen Park contiguous area, with the smaller area west of the bridge deemed Cowen Park and the larger area east of the bridge considered Ravenna Park. The bridge, which spans from NE 62nd Street to Cowen Place NE, connects the northern Roosevelt/

Ravenna Ravenna ( ; , also ; ) is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy. It was the capital city of the Western Roman Empire during the 5th century until its Fall of Rome, collapse in 476, after which ...

neighborhood with the beginning of the University District. The Cowen Park Bridge is one of two bridges that span the Ravenna Park ravine (the other being the 20th Avenue NE Bridge built in 1913) but is the only one open to vehicular traffic. The bridge was built in 1936 under the authority of the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; from 1935 to 1939, then known as the Work Projects Administration from 1939 to 1943) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to car ...

. The bridge engineer was Clark Eldridge. The structure is listed in the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

, and it is a designated city landmark. The bridge has been praised for the

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

light standards along its sides. File:Street Level Cowen Park Bridge, Seattle.jpg, A street-level view of 15th Avenue NE as it continues along the Cowen Park Bridge. File:Art Deco on Cowen Park Bridge.JPG, A close-up of one of the Art Deco light standards on the Cowen Park Bridge.

References

Bridges in Seattle Bridges completed in 1936 Road bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Washington (state) National Register of Historic Places in Seattle 1936 establishments in Washington (state) Concrete bridges in the United States {{Washington-NRHP-stub