of any memorial intent on the bridge's nameplates, including a dedicatory poem on one nameplate (officially attributed to Walter Chandler) that appears to focus on the traffic expected to cross the bridge rather than any memorial. (This is in contrast to the Harahan Bridge, which was named for a railroad executive who died in an accident during the bridge's construction.) Crump himself, for whom the boulevard originally leading to the bridge was named, lived until 1954; Chandler lived until 1967. Bridge history Planning and construction The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge was inspired by the ever increasing flow of traffic on the single-lane cantilevered "wagonways" of the Harahan Bridge from its opening in 1916 all the way to this bridge's opening in 1949. This increased traffic led to the incorporation of West Memphis, Arkansas in 1927 where the Arkansas roadways leading to the Harahan Bridge came together, as well as the 1930 replacement by the Arkansas State Highway Commission (ASHC), the modern-day version of which oversees the Arkansas Department of Transportation, of the original wooden viaduct leading from West Memphis to the Harahan Bridge. Most of the 1930 viaduct was reused for the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge until the present I-55 viaduct replaced it in the 1980's; a small portion of that viaduct now serves as the Arkansas entrance to the Harahan Bridge's Big River Crossing (built on one of its former "wagonways"). Planning for the new bridge began in 1939 with the creation of a joint Memphis-Arkansas bridge commission headed by longtime Memphis political boss E. H. Crump. Walter Chandler, another notable Tennessee politician who was a member of the Crump machine at that time, also served on the bridge commission. Simultaneously with the bridge, Crump planned a new bypass street leading to the bridge, avoiding both downtown Memphis and historic African American neighborhoods to the south, which came to be known as Crump Boulevard. Aretha Franklin was born on Lucy Avenue, in just such a neighborhood south of Crump Boulevard, in 1942 before moving eventually to Detroit where she became famous as the Queen of Soul. By May 1944, the ASHC and Tennessee's Department of Highway and Public Works (now the Tennessee Department of Transportation or TDOT) hired Modjeski and Masters, the firm founded by Ralph Modjeski who designed the Harahan Bridge in 1916 and helped design the area's original Frisco Bridge in 1892, to prepare plans for this