MDC Plans Late Fall Debut For $732,000 Eliot Bridge

After a year of work in the mudflats of the Charles, the Metropolitan District Commission is within two months of completing the new Eliot Bridge (pictured above). The $732,000 structure, which spans the river between Soldiers Field Road and the rotary at the west end of Memorial Drive, will be open to traffic sometime in November--possibly in time for the Yale game crowds.

The four-lane bridge is dedicated, by act of the Legislature, to Charles W. Eliot, 1853, president of the University from 1869 to 1909. The Harvard motif is carried out with red brick and granite facing and with a plaque hearing the dedication to Eliot.

M.D.C. officials have planned no formal dedication ceremony. A spokesman for the Communism said yesterday that "any agitation for such a ceremony will have to come from other sources--presumably the University."

Football Crowds

Although the bridge will do much to case the flow of Saturday football traffic, the main purpose of the span is to link the north and south sides of the river; to connect Boston with its western suburbs. By next year it is hoped that traffic moving down the south side of the Charles will be able to use the Charles River Embankment Parkway now under construction.

Both approaches to the Eliot Bridge will be continuous bow rotaries. The M.D.C. does not want to duplicate the bottleneck at the Larz Anderson Bridge.