Trivia question: What was Chattanooga’s Olgiati Bridge called before it was named for a former mayor?
Answer: Well, if you could hop in a time machine back to the mid-1950s, you’d find newspaper articles peppered with references to a soon-to-be-built Cedar Street Bridge.
The accompanying 1956 photo from the Chattanooga News-Free Press shows crews clearing parts of Cameron Hill. They were moving dirt to make way for a U.S. Highway 27 project and the steel deck girder bridge to come.
Prior to the bridge’s dedicated in 1959, a decision was made to ditch the “Cedar Street” name and honor Mayor Peter Rudolph “Rudy” Olgiati by placing his name on the span.