Singing the blues

I'll buy lunch in the Globe cafeteria, salad bar included, for any man, woman, or child in Boston proper who can say with a straight face that they didn't like when the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge was bathed in that elegant shade of blue.

Walk past any Faneuil Hall tourist cart and there they are, the postcards proudly displaying a blue-lit bridge hovering over the Charles. A huge photograph of a blue bridge adorns the Big Dig's own website.

It was beautiful, this bridge, vital and vibrant, truly the "new symbol of Boston" that Massachusetts Turnpike Chairman Matt Amorello once proclaimed it to be.

If a color had commonality, it was this rich blue hue, and when darkness fell and the bridge glowed soft and deep, it spoke to a city's future. A decade of hassles was nearly over, it said, and this was literally the light at the end of the tunnel.

So it almost goes without saying that it had to be changed.

These days, the bridge is a dull amber, the color, as Charlestown resident Greg John described it, of a cheap glass of beer. There are a few blue splotches along the concrete spans projected by about half a dozen lights, but mostly it looks like any other bridge in Anywhere Else, USA, just more expensive.

The obvious question is, why? Why couldn't we keep what we had, our wonderful blue bridge?

A couple of things are worth noting here. First is, I love the Big Dig, an engineering marvel that brushes up against the miraculous. That said, it's still like any other construction project; in the end, there's a punchlist, and the little things that aren't finished prove more memorable than those that already were. In this case, it's cellphones and car stereos that don't work in the depths, and the lack of blue light on the bridge.

Second is, Amorello neither took my calls yesterday nor returned them. "He's not going to be speaking to you," said Sean O'Neill, his spokesman. I usually have to know someone better to be given a brushoff like that.

Even when I posed my questions to his underlings, I got what would be politely described as the runaround. Initially, officials tried saying that the bridge was still blue. It's not. Then they said that it was never as blue as I thought. It was.

Then they said that it was never intended to be as blue as it once was, and is now exactly as the designer wants it to be.

That's interesting. But on the website of the design engineer is a picture of the bridge bathed in blue light. Is the company just trying to point out an egregious engineering mistake?

"The lighting you're seeing there is the lighting that was planned by the designer," said Michael Swanson, the chief operating officer of the Big Dig. "It was never planned to be a big blue bridge."

When pressed, Swanson and others concede that when the bridge was first completed, special lights were brought in to project the blue hue onto the structure and the cable stays. Permanent spotlights at the base of the concrete were covered in blue gels. It was a big blue bridge, and people loved it, whether they were supposed to or not.

At some point, the added blue projection lights were taken away, though no one at the Big Dig seems to know why, when, or to where. White vehicle headlights and highway-level lamps dulled the blue effect of the few remaining lights. And the blue gels on those lights faded in the heat and sun. The result is a bridge that isn't blue at all, whether by plan or by mistake.

Engineers say they're working on making it blue again, but they've been privately saying that for months and nothing has gotten done. Back in November, Greg John, who overlooks the bridge from his home and office, offered to buy and install new blue gels himself, but was rebuffed. These days they don't even return his calls. I know the feeling.

So, staring at this amber-colored bridge, knowing what once was and will probably never be again, there's really only one conclusion to draw: Amorello really blew it.

Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com.