For Many in Baltimore, the Key Was the City’s ‘Blue Collar’ Bridge

There are more heavily trafficked routes across the Baltimore Harbor than the Francis Scott Key Bridge. The Harbor Tunnel carries double the daily traffic of the Key Bridge and the Fort McHenry Tunnel much more than that.

But the Key, with its gently sloping arch and views that no tunnel could match, had become an emblem of Baltimore’s identity as a working port city.

On Tuesday, from vantage points across the harbor, people stood in disbelief at the sight of parts of the 1.6 mile span jutting jaggedly out of the water, the result of a catastrophic cargo ship crash that toppled the bridge and left six workers missing.

“It’s the blue-collar bridge,” said Kurt L. Schmoke, Baltimore’s mayor in the 1990s and now president of University of Baltimore. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge, 22 miles away, the only bridge in Maryland that was longer, is all about leisure, a gateway to the beach. The tunnels are all function, a way of all but bypassing Baltimore on the way from Washington, D.C., to New York City.

“The Key Bridge,” Mr. Schmoke said, “was definitely for work.”

When the Key Bridge opened in 1977, the Harbor Tunnel was constantly clogged with traffic, reflecting the increased commuting among the fast-growing suburbs of Baltimore and along the I-95 corridor. The bridge was a release valve for the traffic and a godsend for the working-class communities that sat on either end of it. They now had a direct route to the jobs at the plants and distribution centers that line the Harbor.