Building bridges is slow work. The Eliot Bridge,e which will span the Charles River between Soldiers Field Road and the traffic circle at the west end of Memorial Drive, will take a year to complete.

Munroe-Langstroth Contractors of North Attleboro started to dig into the Charles last Wednesday on a one-year, $732,000 contract with the Metropolitan District Commission. The whole project, including the access roads on both sides of the river and an extension of Mem Drive to Arsenal Street, Watertown, will cost another $650,000.

The MDC has taken great pains to integrate the bridge with Harvard. It proposed to the Legislature that it be dedicated to Charles W. Eliot, 1853, president of the University between 1869 and 1909, and the Commission had its architects stress the Harvard motif throughout the design. The facing of the bridge will be done in expensive fancy brickwork and granite in imitation of the Houses; the four gates to the MDC garages under the abutments will be of wrought iron copied from the gates to the Yard; and on the face of each main pier will appear gothic capital E's--for Eliot, of course.

The bridge will have three arches: two 78 feet wide and 15 feet high and a central one 100 feet wide and 17 feet high--the widest span on the Charles. Athletic Director William J. Bingham '16 was consulted; the MDC doesn't want to interfere with the activities of Harvard crews. Both approaches will be continuous-flow rotaries; the MDC doesn't want another such two-headed bottle-neck as the Lars Anderson Bridge. The contract for the rotaries and for the new road on the north shore of the river will be let in July, and the work will be completed at the same time as the bridge, by the end of October 1950, according to the MDC's plans.

The base and filler for the south access rotary and part of the dredging for the south abutment of the bridge were completed during the last 15 months by the J. F. White Contracting Company of Cambridge (Joseph F. White '14). The land on both sides of the river and the river bottom itself are thick mud, absolutely useless as foundation for construction.

Two Munroe-Langstroth steamshovels started dredging out the gook last Wednesday, when the contract began. A third will swing into action in two weeks, when it gets the necessary engine parts. After they have dug pits 11 feet down from water level and stretching out a few yards from either bank, they will fill the holes with gravel mounds 15 inches higher than present water level, as bases for the abutments.

The next step will be to drive dozens of piles in the middle of the river on which to rest the concrete central piers. Steel superstructure will not be in evidence until May, and the surfacing, facing, and finishing touches will occupy another six months.

A raised strip will separate north- and south- bound traffic, on which will stand two-globed lamp posts.

The MDC is very pleased with the Eliot Bridge. Many top officials are Harvard graduates who remember Eliot as "the man who made Harvard what it is today." And Charles Eliot '82, son of the President, was one of three landscape architects who stirred up public pressure for preservation of Boston's parks and river fronts which resulted in the creation of the Metropolitan District Commission in 1919.

The Eliot Bridge will serve as a crucial and long-needed link between the communities south of the Charles and the Concord Turnpike, between the northern and southern halves of the western section of the metropolitan district. If you have trouble getting across the Anderson Bridge to the Stadium this afternoon, remember the ageless war cry: "Wait till next year."