Benjamin Franklin Bridge

The bridge named after the Philadelphian whose enlightened experiments pioneered the study of electricity is about to get a lighting job of its own. The Benjamin Franklin Bridge Lighting Project has selected designer Steven Izenour to illuminate the Delaware River span that has become a trademark on Philadelphia's skyscape. "Architects start with building blocks to make bridges, then go on to puny little buildings," said Izenour, a senior associate with the Philadelphia architecture firm of Venturi, Rauch & Scott Brown.

In the 60 years it has spanned the Delaware, the Benjamin Franklin Bridge has had a rail line and eight auto lanes built across it, has been the scene of hundreds of sweltering Sunday night traffic jams for motorists returning from the Jersey shore, and has even been painted a rather odd shade of blue. Now, an organization backed by business and municipal leaders from both sides of the Delaware River is proposing a new idea for the mammoth steel structure that was once the largest suspension bridge in the world: lighting its 380-foot twin towers and the 2 1/2-foot-thick cables strung across its 1.8-mile span.

At 7 a.m. tomorrow, the 300 or so hardy souls who walk, jog and bike across the Benjamin Franklin Bridge each day will lose the pleasure of taking in two city skylines in one sweeping look. The 66-year-old walkway on the south side of the bridge will close for a complete redecking and won't reopen until June. At the same time, however, the Delaware River Port Authority, which owns and operates the bridge, has opened the walkway on the north side of the bridge. Bridge officials promise that the north walkway presents a spectacular view of Philadelphia and the northern end of the central harbor area, from Pier 19 north to Tioga Marine Terminal on the Pennsylvania side and Pettys Island on the New Jersey side.

On July 1, 1926, a reported 250,000 people walked across the Delaware River Bridge to affirm that after decades of dreaming and planning - and four years of construction - a fixed link had been established between Philadelphia and Camden. Now known as the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, the 1.4-mile-long structure of stone, steel and cable turns 75 on Sunday. To mark the anniversary, the Delaware River Port Authority has decided to close the bridge to vehicular traffic and turn it over to pedestrians from early morning to 11 a.m. Sunday.

The winds roared. The skies opened. The roads and bridges were closed. The power was out. And the streets were rivers, and rivers were seas. It seemed that the whole region was a huge windswept puddle after a devastating storm rambled across the region yesterday, hammering the Jersey Shore, toppling buildings and crippling much of the Philadelphia area. More than 178,000 homes lost electricity. In rush hours, drivers struggled through morning and evening traffic, as many area roads and streets were closed, blocked or flooded.

Traffic backs up on the approach to the Benjamin Franklin Bridge yesterday afternoon as the weekend exodus to the shore begins. If you didn't go, it will be sunny in the city, too.

Mother Nature was in a damp, dreary mood yesterday. But that didn't bother Ralph DeJesus and Maria Garcia at Penn's Landing, as they paused near the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, which was obscured by a romantic mist.

A group protesting against the use of nuclear weapons crosses the Benjamin Franklin Bridge yesterday during demonstrations at General Electric facilities in Camden and Philadelphia on the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Said Robert Smith, a member of the group from the Brandywine Peace Community, "We are beginning to raise the theme and call for . . . conversion of weapons industries like GE from military production to environmental and social needs. "

APPEARING IN THE MORNING HAZE as if it were going to set down on the deck of the Walt Whitman Bridge, a helicopter glides toward a landing on the Philadelphia bank of the Delaware River. The stacks of the old Publicker Industries terminal in South Philadelphia loom in the foreground of the picture, taken Thursday from the walkway of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.

A tractor-trailer loaded with frozen chickens overturned on the entrance ramp to the Benjamin Franklin Bridge shortly after 1 p.m. yesterday. The accident on the Philadelphia side of the span tied up traffic from 6th and Race streets for more than an hour. A Delaware River Port Authority spokesman said the driver was unhurt. The vehicle reportedly flipped as it was going around the monument on the ramp that leads onto the bridge.

A woman who phoned St. Joseph's Hospital in North Philadelphia and claimed she had thrown her three children off the Benjamin Franklin Bridge sent authorities into a frantic search early Tuesday. The woman, identified by law enforcement officials as either Michelle or Familia Perez, made the first of three calls to St. Joseph's shortly after 3:30 a.m., according to a hospital official. She said she had dropped her children, ages 5 months and 2 and 4 years, into the Delaware River, a Coast Guard representative said.

A woman who phoned St. Joseph's Hospital in North Philadelphia and claimed she had thrown her three children off the Benjamin Franklin Bridge sent authorities into a frantic search early Tuesday. The woman, who said her name was Shelly or Familia Perez, made the first in a series of calls to St. Joseph's shortly after 3:30 a.m., according to a hospital official. She said she had given birth a short time earlier and had dropped her newborn into the Delaware River, a U.S. Coast Guard representative said.

The pedestrian stairs on the Camden side of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge will be replaced by a more bike-friendly ramp, as part of a broader plan to build new bike paths on both sides of the Delaware River. The Bicycle Coalition of Philadelphia presented its case for better bridge access at Wednesday's board meeting of the Delaware River Port Authority. Afterward, DRPA chief executive John Matheussen said the agency would accelerate plans for a $3.2 million upgrade to the bridge walkway.

The entrepreneur charges through the dark, dank historic building at the entrance to Camden, speaking excitedly of its potential and bemoaning the vandals who he says tried to get to him by destroying it. He is a large man with a wide gait, a gleaming bald head, and a thick Israeli accent that belies the more than 25 years he has lived in Cherry Hill - now in a home built with imported Jerusalem stone. With broken glass crunching under his feet, he looks around his 1927 Classical Revival structure - known as the Sears building - and asserts that he won't be pushed aside by political insiders who run a Fortune 500 firm with $2.2 billion in annual revenue.

The long-slumbering ghost beneath one of William Penn's five original Philadelphia squares is about to awaken. The 73-year-old subway station beneath Franklin Square, last used in 1979, will be remodeled and reopened to PATCO commuter trains, Delaware River Port Authority chairman John Estey said yesterday. Development around Franklin Square, at Sixth and Race Streets, and the rebirth of the once-seedy square have convinced authority officials that the station will have what it had lacked: passengers.

It's a down real estate market in a city that's been down for decades, but a Greek-born investor who grew up in Asbury Park sees opportunity in a historic building in the heart of Camden. His rationale? "If you go to big cities like New York and Philadelphia, the economy goes up and down," George Trimis said. "In an area like this, the economy can't go down, it can only go up. " When it was built in 1926 - the year the Benjamin Franklin Bridge opened - the 12-story Wilson Building at the corner of Broadway and Cooper Street was known as Camden's first "skyscraper.

With the reward of a Philly cheesesteak in mind, courtesy of manager Lisa Buster, Kenya's Linus Maiyo and Jane Murage fought through a steady drizzle and soaked course to win the men's and women's divisions in the 30th annual Blue Cross Broad Street Run yesterday. "I like cheesesteaks," said Murage, a 22-year-old who defended her title by covering the 10 miles in 53 minutes, 31 seconds. Last year, competing for the first time in the United States, she triumphed in 54:15. Despite the rain, heavy in the latter stages, a record 22,913 finished the race, which began at Central High School and is the largest 10-mile run in the country.

The Rutgers University School of Law-Camden yesterday marked the opening of its $37 million new building, which officials praised as a symbol of the school's excellence and another step in rebuilding Camden. The law school was the recipient of one of the largest checks, $11 million, cut from the $175 million in state recovery money sent to Camden in 2002. Rutgers issued bonds to cover the balance. The 53,000-square-foot, four-story building off Fifth Street near the Benjamin Franklin Bridge has a three-story mural that is illuminated at night.

Two elderly sisters were killed Thursday night in a four-vehicle accident on the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Because of the accident, in the eastbound lanes on the Philadelphia side of the span, the bridge was closed in both directions for 45 minutes, resulting in a miles-long traffic jam. The westbound lanes reopened at 11:30 p.m., but the eastbound lanes remained closed until 1:45 a.m. yesterday. An 80-year-old woman from Philadelphia and her 85-year-old sister from Cherry Hill were traveling in an eastbound car with a third member of their family, identified only as a female from Washington state, when the car struck another vehicle in the rear and then hit the median barrier, said Danelle Hunter, spokeswoman for the Delaware River Port Authority.

With five million square feet to cover - above the traffic and trains and the Delaware River gliding hundreds of feet below - the painting of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge is clearly no ordinary job, and not one to put off for too long. The rusty portion of the bridge at the Philadelphia end has waited many months for a new coat of paint while the governors of Pennsylvania and New Jersey squabbled over a proposed channel deepening of the river. But with the dispute settled May 17, the Delaware River Port Authority board is now ready to entertain bids on the Ben Franklin work and will soon focus on redecking the Walt Whitman Bridge, officials said.