LONG BIÊN BRIDGE

In 1945, after the August Revolution, Long Biên Bridge was renamed for the small village that stood at the foot of the bridge across the Hồng River from Hà Nội.

Designed by famed French architect Gustave Eiffel, Vietnam’s "horizontal Eiffel Tower" was originally called Pont Doumer. (Paul Doumer was the French Governor-General of Indochina from 1897 to 1902.) As indicated on the steel-plated plaque mounted on one of the bridge’s girders, Pont Doumer, almost two kilometers long, was constructed by the firm of Daydfi & Pille, Paris, between 1899 and 1902.

Decades later, the bridge would bear witness to Vietnamese triumph and French defeat and withdrawal from Vietnam. In August 1945, revolutionary armed forces from the liberated provinces in the north marched across Cầu Long Biên to participate in the liberation of Hà Nội. A decade later, a decade of protracted struggle against French efforts to re-colonize Vietnam, they were on the bridge again. On 10 October 1954, triumphant Vietnamese soldiers, fresh from battlefield victories, were greeted on the bridge by cheering crowds as they crossed into Hà Nội. Months later, there was a more somber scene on the bridge as French troops rendezvoused to begin their withdrawal from Vietnam after 80 years of colonial rule.

Long Biên Bridge also played a prominent role in the American War. Bombed repeatedly because of it strategic value, the bridge was repeatedly repaired using improvised materi­als and replacement spans. The original Eiffelian design was destroyed in places and never restored in the center, thus breaking its continuous zigzag pattern.