Jeffersonvilles changing landscape

JEFFERSONVILLE When the Kennedy Bridge was constructed in the early 1960s, Jeffersonville was very different than it is today. And another bridge nearby was still in use.

The Big Four Bridge, at the time, was still used as a railroad span. The railroad river crossing has long-since ceased operations, but is tied to the construction of the new bridge work because it is providing pedestrian access to area residents.

I remember as a little kid, I saw trains going over it, said Jack Vissing, Jeffersonville attorney and member of the citys redevelopment commission, of the Big Four Bridge.

In the late 1960s the trusses were removed and the bridge became inactive, until recently when Louisville opened its access to the bridge.

Early plans for a new downtown Interstate 65 span called for a pedestrian walkway, as required by the Federal Highway Administration. However, because plans were in the works to convert the former bridge to nowhere into a bicycle and pedestrian crossing, it allowed bridge planners to cut the pedestrian access out of the new downtown corridor. Pedestrian access is still required, and is still part of the plan for the east-end bridge.

That railroad and the interstate bridge running through downtown made Jeffersonville a different place than what exists now.

Vissing said the location of the Mountjoy, Chilton, Medley LLP the former McCauley Nichols building off of Court Avenue, between the Clark Memorial Bridge and I-65 was a railroad yard where the cars were switched out.

It was a nasty, noisy dirty kind of place down there, Vissing said. It was really an industrial site. It was an undesirable place to live.

The residents in the area, comprised largely of low-income and minority populations, were displaced when the I-65 bridge was built.

With many residents displaced near the riverfront, the area remained largely an industrial center and the population of city moved farther away from the river and bridges.

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Jeffersonvilles changing landscape