The new bridge was made possible by the gift of the Honorable Larz Anderson as a memorial to his father, a gallant general of the United States Army, Nicholas Longworth Anderson, renowned for his part in the Civil War...[3]The bridge was designed by the architectural firm of Wheelwright, Haven and Hoyt and completed under the direction of John R. Rablin, chief engineer for the Metropolitan District Commission.

It has a Georgian Revival design with neoclassical influences that visually connect it to the other bridges that span the Charles as well as the nearby buildings of Harvard University.

[2] Architectural author Douglas Shand-Tucci writes: In that splendid bridge one sees a distinctive architectural mode originally adopted for Harvard athletic facilities, a mode characterized by the distinctive use of concrete-wall fields dressed with red brick decorative trim...Wheelwright endowed the Anderson Bridge not only with the concrete and brick decorative scheme, but with extraordinary and, indeed, fully sculptural ornamental gilded mantlings, detail as flamboyant but infinitely more stylish than of the [Weld] boathouse.

Its richness is perhaps explained by the design concept of the structure: 'May this bridge,' declares a bronze plaque on the Cambridge side, 'connecting the College Yard and playing fields of Harvard, be an ever present reminder to students passing over it of loyalty to country and Alma Mater.

[8] Anderson Memorial Bridge is the site of Quentin Compson's suicide in William Faulkner's classic novel The Sound and the Fury.