Someone sighed almost every time I mentioned the Jordan Bridge around the Chesapeake Municipal Center. The receptionist for the Department of Public Works sighed after I said “Jordan Bridge” then buzzed for John C. “Jack” Holladay Jr., Customer Service Supervisor. He sat down next to me in the waiting room and sighed as I mentioned the bridge.
“[The City] would love to replace it but the cost is huge,” he said before suddenly pausing. He stood and led me to his office; from there, he attempted to call several people who had worked on the bridge over the years — no answer every time.
Holladay sighed again: “It would cost millions to replace it so they are trying to prolong its life by doing the maximum amount of maintenance.”
On a whim, I drove over to the bridge. I figured that I couldn’t just waltz into the bridge office as I did City Hall so I called the office from a small park behind it. I was immediately transferred to someone who also sighed — perhaps to get a deep breath — before quickly telling me that he was busy and was about to go on vacation. It was my turn to sigh.
South Norfolk and the Bridge
The Jordan Bridge is wedged between rusting memorials to sea commerce and the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, which handles its major repairs just south of the heavily used Downtown and Midtown Tunnels. The bridge connects Chesapeake’s residential-commercial Poindexter Street to Portsmouth’s heavily industrial coast at Elm Avenue. Unless something goes wrong with one of the tunnels, the two-lane Jordan Bridge isn’t the most popular of routes.
Poindexter Street is in South Norfolk, a section of the city of Chesapeake. On first glance, it would appear that South Norfolk and the rest of Chesapeake were separate entities—for a time, they were. South Norfolk merged with and abolished what was left of Norfolk County in 1963 to create the city of Chesapeake, mostly to ward off annexation by the city of Norfolk, which had gobbled up the northern regions of the county and South Norfolk’s sister city, Berkley.
South Norfolk was a bustling port city with several lumberyards, including one belonging to Carl M. Jordan, who funded the bridge and for whom it was named after the Rhode Island incident. Before then, the Jordan was the “Norfolk [County] Portsmouth Bridge” and those words were emblazoned on the draw section’s two counterweights, which hang from the top of the towers. Although decades have passed, catching one of the counterweights in the right light will show that it’s still there.
