LA Historic Monuments: The Shakespeare Bridge

A friend of mine mentioned the Shakespeare Bridge to me in conversation so I decided to go and check it out.

I’ll confess, I had it confused with another famous LA bridge until I drove out to look at it but I was glad I took a look.

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The Shakespeare Bridge begins on Franklin Ave at St George Street, a little less than a mile east of Vermont Street in the Los Feliz or Franklin Hills area. It is a gothic style concrete bridge that was built in 1926.  It was named after the famous playwright, William Shakespeare.

Though it is a small bridge, only 30 feet wide by 260 feet long, it was designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument 1974.

Though it suffered no damage that I know of, the bridge was rebuilt in 1998 after the Northridge Earthquake as part of a seismic retrofit. All of the rebuilding was done in an effort to preserve the historic appearance of the bridge.

However the Shakespeare Bridge didn’t survive it’s fictional destruction in the 2015 movie San Andreas Quake (not to be confused with the movie San Andreas also released in 2015) where the bridge is breaking to bits as the heroes of the story are attempting to cross it.

If you happen to be checking out Fred 62, Figaro Bistrot, The Good Greek Grill, the Los Feliz Theatre or one of the other cool places I wrote about over on Vermont St, you might want to take a minute to drive out Franklin Ave a bit to see this LA Landmark.

And if you need additional incentive to take a peek at this bridge there are persistent rumors that it was used in a scene in the movie, Wizzard of Oz.  There is skepticism on this, but none of the studios concerned deny it.  The Shakespeare Bridge Gardens below it are also beautiful (but I don’t recommend driving out just to see the gardens).

More photos after the break…