Boston Chinatown Arch

It is made of concrete, tile roofs, and wooden beams. There are lion pedestals on both sides of the arch, but only lions on one side the day I was there.

The street is open to cars on one side, and closed for about 200' on the other side, making a lovely plaza with great landscaping themes that will be subject of another post.

The lack of car traffic makes it easy to admire or photograph the arch.

The underside of the tile roofs are made of carved wooden supports.

The view from the side with an active vehicular road.

Large pieces being cast

When the artisans first began casting concrete pieces, they were quite small and delicate, like the pieces shown in the photo below. But now they have moved on to casting much larger pieces, as shown above.

These large pieces will be lifted onto the arch beam using a crane.

Montreal Arches

(Guest post by Charles Akben-Marchand of Images of Centretown)

This past Saturday, I went on a trip to Montreal to check out transit, cycling, and other features there that we can learn from in Ottawa (both in terms of what to do and what not to do). We also swung by Montreal's Chinatown to check out their arches.

This arch is one of two on Boul. Saint-Laurent, and faces South-East. The other one is a few blocks up. It spans four lanes of traffic, and like ours has two lions at the entrance.

This third one is at the start of a pedestrian zone perpendicular to Saint-Laurent, which Google Maps says is Boul. de la Gauchetière Est. It's noticeably smaller. Unfortunately, the white streaks are not runny paint, but pigeon poop.

While it was raining when I took this shot, you can see that pigeon netting covers the entire decorative roof tiles of the arch, which takes a lot away from it. It also looks like pigeon poop is clumping up under the pigeon net on top of the decorative element on top of the roof (which might be a dragon head, but it's obscured).

Hopefully the sculpted dragons on Ottawa's Royal Arch will scare away the pigeons. Or maybe they can include an owl design...

Somerset closed to car traffic

warning signs have been put up to advise motorists and buses that Somerset will be closed to permit construction of the arch

while the closure is only for one short block, it will disrupt traffic along much of Somerset

It will be closed for two months.

The warning signs on the west side have a similar message, but had to be positioned to warn through traffic without discouraging local traffic that can still access side streets and Chinatown businesses.

Deep foundations for an eternal arch

The holes were dug into the street for the foundations, and concrete poured in a large block. On top of this, a steel form has been put in place to hold the rebars and the poured cement that will form the column holding up the arch.

Looking into the hole, the size of the concrete block is apparent. It sits on bedrock. Notice the four holes in the block.

A boring machine drills through the four holes in the cement block, into the bedrock. The new holes go 28' down through the bedrock. Anchors will be installed to hold the block to the bedrock.

The anchors through the foundation into the bedrock will make the foundation earthquake (tremblor) proof, so the arch should really be eternal.

Tulip Arch

Each year at Dow's Lake the NCC sets up this entry arch to the Tulip Festival tents and vendor area.

With the added awareness of arches in life caused by the construction of the celebrated Chinatown Arch on Somerset Street, I paused to look at this tulip arch. It is simple, a metal frame with canvas infill. It does work to create an entry point. And person after person stopped to take a picture of it. I was astounded how many photos were taken in the ten minutes I watched the arch.

It drove home how photographed and memorialized the new Chinatown Arch will be once it is finished and everyone will have to take a picture of it.

foundations

The forms for the foundations of the Chinatown Royal Arch are being put in place on Somerset Street, just a few doors east of Cambridge. The current sidewalk will be widened, taking over a bit of one traffic lane on each side of the street.

The foundation hole was dug down to bedrock. The 130+ ton weight of the structure will be carried by foundations down to the bedrock. The visible part of the pillars are have already been made, and are in the yard behind the Yangtze Restaurant.

The same as for most construction projects, the preparation work seems to take forever; the actual assembly of the arch will be quick.

Other Arches - Busan, South Korea

casting concrete pieces

Some of the concrete pieces are cast very large. These complex dragon pieces are about 4' x 4' square.

Sea serpent.

casting concrete pieces

small piece of decorative cast concrete that came out of the plastic-lined mold on the right

Casting in 3 steps: multiple pieces being cast in sequence on the casting table. The farthest mold has the rebar in it, the middle box has been filled with cement mix, the front piece has had its mold removed revealling the cement object

Many of the larger pieces are like three dimensional jig saw puzzle pieces into which a number of smaller pieces will insert and lock into place

Pieces are left draped in wet burlap to slow down the drying process so the cement can continue its curing (chemical process that hardens the materials and bonds them together)

Pieces of column cylinders left to cure