15 years after collapse, part of 35W bridge is forever preserved in St. Paul
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- More than 15 years after the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River, part of the structure has found its final home at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.
Two pieces of the bridges' gusset plates were installed in a building currently under construction on campus Saturday morning.
The display, which will be central to the future home of engineering, communications and more at St. Thomas, was more than a decade in the making.
"I made my first call to MNDOT in 2009 with the idea of capturing some of these pieces for this education purposes," said Dean Don Weinkauf, who heads the engineering department at St. Thomas. "It was a series of negotiations and conversations, and finally after the Minnesota state Legislature released the pieces to educational institutions, we went out to the debris field in Afton and selected these pieces."
Since 2013, the pieces have sat in storage.
"It's been a long time coming, we waited for this day. There's been a lot of ideas as to how we can preserve these pieces, how we can make them part of our educational mission here at St. Thomas," Weinkauf said. "When the idea of this building, this facility came into play, we decided that this would be the best place.:
Weinkauf says he hopes the display serves as a reminder for civil engineering students, who will see it nearly every day when the building is complete in early 2024.
This is how we can educate engineers and students to understand the intricated connection with engineering and society," he said. "We have to be deliberate how we learn from it. This installation is a really powerful example of that."
