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

arch foundations

Construction workers have dug the holes for the foundations of the arch. The foundation will come up through what is now the curb side lane of the street. When finished, this area will be a wider sidewalk zone.

While the hole does not appear very deep, it goes down to bedrock, providing a sound foundation for an arch to last forever.

casting concrete

Multiple pieces of decorative concrete work are being made all at once on the flat concrete platform at the Cambridge Steet open-air atellier. The concrete pieces are representations of bamboo posts. There are rebars sticking out of the bottom (left) of the pieces which will be set in future pieces of concrete.

The artisans from China use a combination of modern tools (power cement mixer, trucks) and traditional wooden molds. The worker in the back left is sweeping dust off the platform using a short-handled whisk, which may be a traditional tool but also seems to me to be rather hard on the back.

Artisans from China

The Chinatown Royal Arch is being built by a combination of Canadian contractors (Delcan, Tomlinson) and Chinese contractors employed by the Beijing Historical Relic and Construction Company (and no, Jim Watson is not their boss).


About 20 artisans are in Canada now. They are the concrete guys, busy casting the decorative elements and eventually the main beam that crosses Somerset Street. They are housed in several rented buildings near the site - appropriately above a chinese restaurant and in the old Bert's Bike repair house. They brought their own cook with them from China. Local restuarants in Chinatown have shown hospitality to the workers and are helping their cook acquire supplies the Canadian way.

On Sunday, someone donated 10 fresh caught fish to the workers, and it made their mid-day dinner on Monday.

The concrete workers will be here til mid-June, when all the casting is done and the arch installed over the street. Crews will be working seven days a week, then they will return to China. The workers do get time off - on Sunday past they had a tour of Parliament Hill and the downtown.

In June, crews of painting artisans will arrive to give the arch 17 coats of paint, including some gold paint.

Preparing for the gateway pillars

The Arch will be located on Somerset between Bronson and Cambridge. One leg will be by the City parking lot (former Grad's tavern before it burned down) and the other in front of Sushi 88 - Brown Raw Sugar restuarant.

The sidewalks have already been removed in preparation for construction.

A large saw cut in the curb side lane on each side of Somerset marks where the pavement is to be removed. A "bulb out" will be constructed, permanently  narrowing Somerset to two traffic lanes. The bulb out is where the supporting pillars of the Arch will be built, the lions on pedestals installed, and four decorative new style lamps. The pillars are expected to be in place by May 15th.

Casting concrete pieces

In their Cambridge Street outdoor atellier the Chinese artisans have set up several tent shelters and work stations.

The long concrete pad shown running from the tent to the foreground has a uniform slope on its right edge. Looking closely, notice the forms are also curved to fit this casting bed. Presumably some parts of the arch require angled surfaces for the front or back of the pieces.

Some of the first cast pieces. Several different designs have now been cast. The arch is symmetrical front to back and side to side, so multiple pieces of each element is required.

Work shelter on the site.

Lions resting behind Yangtze

There is a large vacant lot behind the Yangtze Restaurant at the corner of Somerset and Cambridge Streets. The lot is being used to cast the concrete elements for the Arch, and to store these stone pieces shipped from China.

Two lions in the background, a pair of small dragons in the left foreground.

Other Arches - Honalulu, Hawaii & Mexico City

This is the gateway arch in Honalulu, Hawaii. The Chinatown there is famous, rated a must-see in the tourist guides. The roof is green -- Honalulu is no longer a national capital. The arch makes a nice door-like feature over the sidewalk crossing over a river on the edge of chinatown, which is visible in the background.

This is the Mexico City Royal Arch -- note the gold roof. It was inaugerated in 2008.

Groundbreaking Day 22 April 2010

Official Groundbreaking: The Shovel Crew

Hard hats await the dignitaries for the groundbreaking ceremony.

The dignitary work crew attacks the heaps of clay provided for the official groundbreaking. This soil was stacked earlier on Cambridge Street -- the arch itself will be nearby on Somerset Street.

Yasir Naqvi encourages the shovel brigade to get the photographers lined up to the left of the picture.

Mayor Larry OBrien and the real construction workers and artisans from China who will actually dig the real dirt and do the heavy lifting.

Official Groundbreaking: The Table

Before a construction, owners and builders perform rituals to bless the land, bring safety to the workers, ask for good weather and ensure a smooth process in building the gateway.

 

Whole roast pig, roast chicken, fruit,rice, and ceremonial tea offerings.

Ceremonial offerings. On the left, Mr Joe holds folded paper envelopes for the burnt offering.

  

The paper offerings of money are burnt in a fire.