The Moody Pedestrian Bridge is a

pedestrian bridge A footbridge (also a pedestrian bridge, pedestrian overpass, or pedestrian overcrossing) is a bridge designed solely for pedestrians.''Oxford English Dictionary'' While the primary meaning for a bridge is a structure which links "two points at a ...

Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson co ...

on the campus of the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

. It connects two buildings within the

Moody College of Communication The Moody College of Communication is the communication college at The University of Texas at Austin. The college is home to top-ranked programs in advertising and public relations, communication studies, communication sciences and disorders, jou ...

across a street.

Design

The Moody Pedestrian Bridge is an inverted Fink truss bridge that connects the second floor of the Belo Center for New Media to the fourth floor of Jones Communication Center buildings A and B over West Dean Keeton Street near the edge of the University of Texas campus. The bridge is supported by a central steel

pier image:Brighton Pier, Brighton, East Sussex, England-2Oct2011 (1).jpg, Seaside pleasure pier in Brighton, England. The first seaside piers were built in England in the early 19th century. A pier is a raised structure that rises above a body of ...

standing on the

median In statistics and probability theory, the median is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample, a population, or a probability distribution. For a data set, it may be thought of as "the middle" value. The basic fe ...

of the street below, together with a series of steel towers anchored to the deck by tension rods. The overall length of the bridge is approximately , with the highest central towers reaching high. The bridge has aesthetic lighting integrated into its stainless steel railings. Bridge designer

Miguel Rosales Miguel Rosales (born 1961 in Guatemala) is president and principal designer of Rosales + Partners, an architecture firm based in Boston, Massachusetts. He specializes in bridge aesthetics and design. Some examples of these bridges include; Phyl ...

, of

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

-based bridge architects and engineers Rosales + Partners, provided the conceptual and preliminary design, bridge architecture, and aesthetic lighting design. Freese and Nichols was the engineering firm of record. The construction contractor for the bridge was Flintco. Funding for the bridge's design and construction was provided by the

Moody Foundation The Moody Foundation is a charitable foundation incorporated in Texas and based in the island city of Galveston. It was chartered in 1942 by William Lewis Moody Jr. and his wife Libbie Rice Shearn Moody ''"to benefit, in perpetuity, present and ...

, a charitable foundation based in

Galveston, Texas Galveston ( ) is a coastal resort city and port off the Southeast Texas coast on Galveston Island and Pelican Island in the U.S. state of Texas. The community of , with a population of 47,743 in 2010, is the county seat of surrounding Galvesto ...

History

In November 2012 the University of Texas's school of communication expanded from its buildings in the Jones Communication Center into the newly completed Belo Center for New Media across Dean Keeton Street to the north. To physically (and symbolically) reconnect the college's departments, the college began exploring plans to connect the buildings with an elevated bridge. In 2013 the

donated $50 million to the college, for which the school was renamed the

; some of those funds were used to pay for the design and construction of the pedestrian bridge. Construction on the bridge was approved by the Austin City Council in June 2015 and began shortly thereafter. Dean Keeton Street was partially closed to traffic due to construction in December 2015 and January 2016. After some delays, construction was completed and the bridge opened to student and faculty use on 22 March 2016.

References

External links

Moody Bridge construction time-lapse
{{University of Texas at Austin, campus Bridges in Austin, Texas Bridges completed in 2016 University of Texas at Austin campus Steel bridges in the United States Pedestrian bridges in Texas Truss bridges in the United States