Pont Félix-Houphouët-Boigny

Opened in 1957, three years before independence, the Houphouët-Boigny bridge was the first fixed crossing of the Ébrié Lagoon and ended a system in which people and goods moved between the colonial Plateau and the African quarter of Treichville by ferry. Its construction reflected the last major colonial infrastructure investment in Abidjan before independence in 1960, and it immediately became the artery that let Treichville and, later, Marcory and Koumassi grow as residential and industrial quarters serving the Plateau's commercial core. The bridge carried the whole of Abidjan's north-south road traffic on its own for a decade, until the Général-de-Gaulle bridge opened in 1967 to relieve growing congestion, and for almost sixty years these two crossings, later joined by the tolled Henri-Konan-Bédié bridge in 2014, remained the only road links between the Plateau and the lagoon's southern shore. Structurally the bridge is a modest steel and concrete girder crossing, functional rather than monumental, and it has been resurfaced and strengthened several times since 1957 to cope with traffic volumes far beyond anything anticipated at construction. It carries no toll, unlike the newer 2014 crossing, and remains one of the most heavily used roads in the city, feeding traffic from Treichville directly into the government and business district of the Plateau. There is no public interpretation or monument marking its history on site; its significance lies entirely in its continued function as one of only three lagoon crossings serving a metropolitan area that has grown from a few hundred thousand people in 1957 to several million today.