Opened on April 15, 1953, the John E. Mathews Bridge has for 71 years carried cars, trucks and buses across the St. Johns River from downtown Jacksonville to the Arlington neighborhood via the Arlington Expressway. Conceived in the late 1930s and planned during the late 1940s, it opened the Arlington community and the Beaches to a surge of post-WW II development.
The timing helps explain the predominance of midcentury modern architecture throughout the neighborhoods of Arlington.
The design of the Mathews Bridge reflects the assumptions of engineers and planners of the 1940s, prioritizing automobiles over everything . In the 21st century, those assumptions no longer apply, which is why the Mathews Bridge looks and is — in fact — obsolete.
The bridge is 7376 feet long with a main span of 810 feet. The overall width of the bridge deck is less than 50 feet. Four travel lanes lie between the steel guardrails that keep cars, trucks and buses from tumbling into the river below. For decades major bridges have included inside and outside breakdown lanes, offering a safe place for vehicles to pull over and leave the travel lanes free.