Long before the bridge or the cut it spans, this narrow isthmus between Lake Union and Lake Washington served as a portage for the Coast Salish people who traveled these waters. In Lushootseed, the indigenous language of the region, the place was called stexwugwil -- "carry a canoe." Plans to dig a canal here surfaced as early as the 1860s, and a north-south road crossed the portage by 1879. A narrow canal was excavated perpendicular to that road, fitted with a set of locks, and bridged. When the University of Washington needed streetcar access to its north-side campus in time for the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, a temporary bridge was thrown up. That structure gave way to a pedestrian suspension bridge in 1910, as work on the wider and deeper Montlake Cut began in earnest. Piers and abutments for a permanent bridge were poured in 1914 as part of the Lake Washington Ship Canal construction, but a serious proposal for the bridge itself did not materialize until 1916.

The architects made a deliberate choice. Edgar Blair, Harlan Thomas, and A. H. Albertson designed the Montlake Bridge and its control towers in the Collegiate Gothic style that Carl F. Gould had established across the University of Washington campus. The bridge was meant to look like it belonged to the university, and it does -- its stone-clad towers echo the campus buildings visible just north of the crossing. Beneath the ornamental surface, the engineering is distinctive for different reasons. The bridge is one of six bascule designs derived from the Chicago model, but it alone uses trunnion supports, a workaround adopted specifically to avoid a patent infringement lawsuit by the Strauss Bascule Bridge Company. At 46 feet of clearance, the Montlake Bridge has the highest of Seattle's four original Ship Canal drawbridges, which also include the Ballard, Fremont, and University bridges. It was the last of the four to be completed, and the only one on the state highway system. The city built it at a cost of $670,000, with steel fabricated and erected by the Wallace Equipment Company.

The bridge that football fans demanded in 1920 now carries roughly 60,000 vehicles on a typical weekday, funneling traffic to and from State Route 520 through a single chokepoint that has frustrated commuters for decades. When the bascule leaves rise for a passing sailboat -- most openings are for pleasure craft, since commercial tugs can usually clear the 46-foot span -- traffic backs up for more than a mile in both directions. Proposals for alternate routes and additional crossings have surfaced repeatedly. Plans for the SR-520 replacement project include a second bascule bridge alongside the existing one. Yet the Montlake Bridge is also deeply loved. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 and designated a City of Seattle Landmark alongside the Montlake Cut itself. Every first Saturday in May, the bridge serves as the ceremonial gateway for Opening Day of boating season, when decorated vessels parade through the cut while spectators crowd the bridge deck and shoreline.

From 1940 to 1970, and again since 1981, the electric trolleybuses of Seattle's transit system have rolled across the Montlake Bridge, their overhead wires strung along a route that few other movable bridges in the world still accommodate. When Vancouver's 1911 Cambie Street Bridge closed in 1984, the Montlake Bridge and the nearby University Bridge became the last two movable bridges in the Western Hemisphere with active trolleybus service -- a distinction they hold to this day. The bridge operates on channel 13 for marine traffic, and its opening restrictions are more complex than any other drawbridge on the Ship Canal, reflecting the volume of both vehicle and boat traffic it must balance. One long blast and one short on the horn signals a request to raise the leaves. Commuters grind their teeth. Sailors glide through. The Gothic towers watch both with equal indifference, as they have since 1925.