When I see new construction in progress, I never expect that the result will be pleasing to the eye or uplifting to the spirit. The best I hope for is that it won’t be outright ugly, like a self-storage warehouse or a strip mall.

So what a surprise it is to venture down to State Street in Schenectady and look at the new railroad overpass that is in the process of being completed, with its brick arches, its gracefully curving roofs, its two-tiered walkway, its recessed lighting.

It’s not just a railroad overpass but a whole architectural complex that is – heaven help us – a delight to the eye, and a vast, vast improvement over what was there before.

What was there before was a basic metal-sided bridge which kept the State Street sidewalk below it dark, damp, and slimy, with water drips and pigeon droppings.

It was just a short walk under the old bridge, from Broadway at one end of the block to Erie Boulevard on the other end, but it was a forbidding one, and Schenectady planners viewed it as a major psychological obstacle. People tended to stay on the side of it they were already on. Walking under it was akin to walking though a sewer pipe.

“The credit for the structure goes to a design team at Synthesis Architects and to Schenectady’s commissioner of public works, Milt Mitchell, who contributed ideas and oversaw construction.”

As part of the remaking of State Street now in progress – a $13 million undertaking known as the streetscape project – the bridge was to be redone, and redone it has been.

Walking under it now you feel that you’re walking through one of the Beaux Arts porticos at Spa State Park. And what I like best about it is you hardly notice the bridge itself, so artfully concealed is it behind what the architects call an “esthetic truss” – basically an elaborate decorative screen.

Well, this is one of those cases where a picture is worth a thousand words, and I could go on talking and describing details and it wouldn’t be worth as much as your having one good look for yourself, which I hope you will do.

The credit for the structure goes to a design team at Synthesis Architects and to Schenectady’s commissioner of public works, Milt Mitchell, who contributed ideas and oversaw construction.

As for the cost, it was about $4 million, which may seem like an awful lot just to gussy up and make less forbidding a railroad overpass. But consider that Albany spent more than double that to build a footbridge from its downtown to its waterfront, across a major highway, and what it got for its money is OK, and functional, but certainly nothing of great beauty compared to this construction in downtown Schenectady.

If you do go have a look and if you wonder what the fat black posts are on the sidewalk under the bridge, looking as if they were designed for ships to tie up to, they are, as a matter of fact, posts designed for ships to tie up to, called bollards, as I learned.

Richard Eats, one of the Synthesis architects, tells me he wanted something to protect the bridge abutments from possible bus crashes and settled on bollards as both esthetically pleasing and as suggestive of the old Erie Canal. (Now aren’t you glad you read this column, so you can learn things like that?)

If you wonder further how a down-at-the-heels city like Schenectady can afford such a grand undertaking, I will tell you that of the $13 million total “streetscape” cost, the Metroplex Development Authority (using sales tax receipts) is paying $4 million and the state and federal governments are paying $6.4 million, leaving the city itself to pay $1.6 million. Also, the city is angling to get its share reduced to $400,000, though state legislation will be required for that.