Sixth Street Bridge

An Interview with 6th Street Bridge Architect Michael Maltzan Michael Maltzan founded Michael Maltzan Architecture in 1995 and has worked on many projects, including the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University, MoMA QNS, the UCLA Hammer Museum, and the Sixth Street Viaduct.

https://nypost.com/2026/05/20/us-news/why-los-angeles-river-matters-more-than-ever/

Why LA’s concrete river matters more than ever The 51-mile concrete river cuts across Los Angeles in a form that feels uniquely LA.

From the article:
The 1932 6th Street Bridge was the queen of the river, with its huge size and movie history, but it was made from nerfed concrete and began crumbling just decades after its completion.

I was on the Citizens’ Advisory Committee (CAC) for the redesign, and we voted to recreate the original design using modern standards. Instead, we got a design that breaks up the rest of the set. The 6th Street Bridge is a complete mismatch with the classic styling of the previous viaducts. In retrospect, I see that the CAC was enacted to fill a requirement but was never taken seriously by anyone outside of it.

But the new bridge is safer and should stay up in an earthquake. This viaduct has massive base isolators, giant rubber doughnuts at the base of each arch that literally give the bridge wiggle room. The central pylon of the old bridge is gone, as well as any connection to the river below, including an old entrance on the west bank that’s been locked for at least ten years now.

The 1932 6th Street Bridge was famous for its hundreds and hundreds of film appearances and car commercials, from Terminator to The Dark Knight Rises. The new bridge has been open for several years now, but I haven’t noticed many movie or commercial shoots featuring it. The reopening made the bridge a media darling, and people came from all over to walk on it, spray paint it, do burnouts on it, and then finally, steal all seven miles of copper wiring from it.

The L.A. River's Bridges Are Ready for Their Close-Up | Essay At Night, a Photographer Turns His Lens on These Marvels of Infrastructure

Greenery takes shape at the Sixth Street Viaduct park The copper wire is gone, the lights are out, and graffiti is everywhere, but the grass is also in the ground for the new L.A. River-adjacent park space below the Sixth Street Viaduct.

Scene from the movie Point Blank released in 1967

Copper prices are rising. Thieves are taking notice Los Angeles (CNN) — Often strung from utility poles or buried beneath our feet, copper wire has played a critical role in powering America’s electrical grid for more than a

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-12-19/boyle-heights-is-seeing-light-again-after-years-of-broken-streetlamps

Boyle Heights is finally seeing light again after years of broken streetlamps After years in darkness, Boyle Heights is finally seeing streetlights restored along key routes thanks to a new $1.07-million city-funded repair team.