Tampa Bay Skyway pylons
— two yellow harps holding up the road.
Not only on a wall.
Tampa Bay Skyway pylons, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“The Sunshine Skyway crosses the mouth of Tampa Bay on a single cable-stayed main span, opened in 1987 after the original bridge collapse. Twin concrete pylons rise about 430 feet above the channel, strung with yellow stay cables that fan from deck to tower. From a distance the pylons read as two slender lyres planted in the bay, the cables catching the Gulf light long after the deck has gone flat. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
The Sunshine Skyway Bridge carries Interstate 275 and US 19 across the lower mouth of Tampa Bay, linking St. Petersburg on the Pinellas side to Terra Ceia in Manatee County. The current cable-stayed span opened on April 30, 1987, replacing the 1954 cantilever bridge whose southbound deck collapsed after the freighter Summit Venture struck a support pier in May 1980. The crossing runs roughly four miles end to end, with a main span of 1,200 feet and a vertical clearance of 193 feet above the shipping channel.
Two reinforced-concrete pylons rise about 430 feet above the water and carry 21 pairs of stay cables each, fanned in a harp pattern out to the deck. The cables are painted the deep yellow that has become the bridge's signature. Figg & Muller engineered the cable-stayed main span, the first in the United States to place cables in the median rather than along the edges. Massive concrete dolphins ring the piers, designed after the 1980 collapse to absorb the impact of a ship roughly the size of the Summit Venture.
Drivers pay a $1.75 toll southbound at the Skyway plaza, with electronic SunPass at the same rate. Two fishing piers built from the salvaged approaches of the old bridge sit at either end of the crossing and operate as Florida state park sites, with separate small vehicle fees. The North Skyway Fishing Pier is the longer of the two and stays open around the clock. From the piers the cable-stayed span reads as the dominant element on the horizon at almost any hour of the day.
