More than a year after work began, the city of Bangor on Tuesday will rededicate and officially open the new pedestrian footbridge over the Kenduskeag Stream in downtown.
Construction on the new Willard C. Orr Pedestrian Bridge was completed last month, when crews put the finishing touches on the 400-foot span. The new bridge replaces the worn-out old bridge, which was installed in 1980 and found to have severe cracks and other deficiencies.
The new bridge is a prefabricated steel truss bridge that is narrower than the old bridge to allow for more efficient snow removal. It is made of eye-catching bright green steel and boasts old-fashioned-looking street lamps. It cost the city a total of $1.2 million for its fabrication and installation. It allows pedestrians to easily travel by foot between West Market Square and Pickering Square, and Exchange Street and the Penobscot Judicial Center on the other side of Kenduskeag Stream.
Pfc. Willard “Carleton” Orr was born in Bangor in 1920 and enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps after graduating from Bangor High School in 1939. At age 21, he was the sole Bangor native to be killed during the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. Orr was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart. He is considered Missing in Action, and is memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial in Hawaii.
The bridge rededication ceremony is set for 11 a.m. Tuesday.
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