Why New York City Wouldn’t Exist Without These 5 Bridges

Other than the Bronx,

the other four boroughs of New York City are all on islands.

Originally, the only way to get between different parts

of New York City was to use a ferry,

and it became a danger as well as an inconvenience.

So bridges were conceived and built

across some of the rivers that separate

the five boroughs of New York City.

Hi, I'm Michael Wyetzner,

and I've been an architect in New York for over 35 years.

And today, we're gonna talk about some of the architectural

and engineering marvels that are the bridges that connect

all five boroughs of New York and New Jersey.

As recently as the 1850s,

the technology did not exist to span the East River,

let alone the much wider, Hudson River.

And the first to do it

is one of the great technological marvels of any age,

and that's the Brooklyn Bridge.

So a few things about building this bridge.

First of all, shipping traffic could not be interrupted.

So the height of the bridge

was made to be 135 ft above high tide.

And to this day, navy ships, that is the maximum height

they can be in order to get underneath the Brooklyn Bridge.

So all these bridges are measured above high tide,

because really, all the rivers that surround New York

are subject to the tides,

because they're so close to the ocean.

The towers themselves are 278 ft tall.

It's a time that these were built,

these towers were actually the tallest structures

in all of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

So Brooklyn wasn't always a borough.

In fact, at the time the bridge was conceived and built,

it was the third largest city in America,

and separate from New York.

And New York City became the five boroughs

with consolidation in 1898.

So this photograph is actually looking towards Brooklyn

from the Manhattan side,

and you could see what a great span it was

to go across the East River.

In fact, it's 1,595 ft from tower to tower.

So to achieve this took monumental effort

and some really ingenious engineering from John Roebling.

Not only did he have to engineer the entire bridge,

but he also had to manufacture the cable

that was his own invention.

So a suspension bridge basically

is you build these two towers, which you see here,

and then you suspend this long cable from those towers,

and then you drop cables down from that suspended catenary

that supports the roadway.

The Brooklyn Bridge is known as a great suspension bridge,

but it's actually also a cable stay bridge.

It's two in one.

A cable stay bridge takes two towers,

and instead of suspending a catenary

that anchors the roadway with direct cables.

So the crossing of these cables forms this lacy finery

in contrast to these massive stone towers.

And the completed towers weigh 140 million pounds each.

So what people don't realize is actually,

these great granite towers actually sit

on a foundation of wood.

These towers sit on caissons, which is just a French word

for chest like treasure chest.

And these caissons are actually like a huge trapezoidal dome

made out of wood that was floated

into the middle of the river,

and they dropped them to the bottom of the river,

at which point they pumped in compressed air

and pumped out water, so that men could work in the space

underneath this sort of wooden roof,

and they can dig down with pick and shovel

until they hit bedrock.

And when they finally did hit bedrock,

they pumped the inner space with concrete,

and that is what these towers sit on.

So as they were digging down into the riverbed,

they were piling stones on top of the caisson.

So little by little, it sunk as they dug,

and they added more stone, and it sung to the bottom

of the river until they hit bedrock,

and then the tower began.

This was such a great idea in theory,

but they didn't know a lot about hydraulics,

and certainly, they didn't know a lot

about how it affected the human body.

In a sense, this was really low tech.

They were building these foundations with picks and shovels

in these horrible conditions.

It was over 100 degrees under there.

The ceiling height was only 9 1/2 ft.

It was really heavy, heavy air, and a lot of people died.

It turned out to be what's known as the bends,

which is essentially, just nitrogen bubbles

in the bloodstream.

And years later, it was figured out

that if as long as you came up slowly,

you would not be affected by this.

So the chief engineer, John Roebling,

he didn't really believe in modern medicine.

And when his foot was crushed by a boat

against one of the piers, he refused medical attention,

which would've saved his life.

And subsequently, in a matter of weeks,

he came down with tetanus and died.

The engineering fell to his son, Washington,

who had researched a lot of the case on technology,

and he became the chief engineer,

and oversaw the building of the bridge

until he got a terrible case of the bends

and was incapacitated, and then the rest of the bridge

was left to his wife, Emily.

And what a lot of people don't realize is Emily Roebling

essentially got the Brooklyn Bridge built.

One of the great unsung women in history.

And in 1883, when the bridge was finally complete,

Emily was the first to cross the bridge

with a rooster to symbolize victory.

Next up, the bridge over troubled water,

the Hell Gate Bridge.

So I love about this bridge

a lot like the Brooklyn Bridge is the contrast

between the steel work of the span

and the stone work of the towers.

But in this case, the towers are really just decorative

and are there for show only.

They're not actually supporting the arch.

The arch is being supported at the base of those towers,

but you didn't need a tower above that base.

So the bridge was begun in 1912 and completed in 1916

in the middle of World War I.

And it spans across one portion

of the East River from Astoria, Queens to Wards Island.

It's 970 ft of which this arch spans,

and this steel arch was using sort of a new kind of steel,

which was carbon steel, and which was extremely strong.

It was designed to hold 60 200-ton locomotives all at once.

So it's called the Hell Gate Bridge,

because ever since the Dutch were here,

the confluence of the East River and the Harlem River

right around Randalls and Wards Island

were really dangerous waters.

By the 1850s, about a thousand ships a year

would smash onto the rocks in the straits,

hence the name Hell Gate.

So to move goods and people across this waterway,

the most efficient way to do it was with a bridge.

And so they hired Gustav Lindenthal,

a great German engineer to accomplish that.

Again, in order not to interrupt shipping traffic,

the arch had to be built from either side,

and then connected at the end in the middle.

And this bridge was built so precisely

that it was only 5/16 of an inch

that had to be accounted for at the end when the two met,

which is exactly the width of the end of this pen,

which is an amazing feat.

So this bridge is just for trains.

It was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company

who also built Penn Station.

The Pennsylvania Rail Road Company had bought

the Long Island Rail Road and they brought trains

underneath the East River through tunnels to Penn Station.

But to get to New England, they needed a bridge

to span across to Queens and the Bronx.

And so they built the Hell Gate Bridge,

so it essentially connected Long Island

to the mainland in the Bronx,

which made it a very high value bridge,

so high in fact that it was targeted by the Nazis

during World War II.

Let's take a closer look at the towers.

This is a beautiful photograph.

I love this tower in contrast to this steel arch.

Again, like the Brooklyn Bridge,

it's the contrast of this fine metal work

against this heavy stone work.

But what I really find interesting about the towers

is that the architect who was Henry Hornbostel

who worked with Lindenthal on a number of bridges

made these look like triumphal arches,

like something you'd see in Rome or Paris.

And so there's the central arch in the middle

that the trains run through, but then there's smaller arches

at the ends for people to go through.

So in the 1990s, Congress allocated $55 million

to repaint the bridge, and they chose this new color

called Hell Gate Red.

Unfortunately, that paint didn't have

the proper UV protection and it quickly faded,

and had to be repainted, and each subsequent repainting

also did not have the proper UV protection.

And subsequently, this bridge always looks faded and worn.

One New York City politician

said, It should be the jewel of the city,

but instead, it's eight shades of lavender.

Next up, the oldest moving bridge in New York,

Macombs Dam Bridge.

So the Macombs Dam Bridge spans the Harlem River

between the Bronx and Upper Manhattan,

essentially connecting Yankee Stadium

to what was the Polo Grounds.

And now, Rucker Park, the famous basketball court,

is at the foot of that bridge in Manhattan.

This bridge is only 25 ft above high tide,

which boats can't get under.

So to counteract that, they created what's known

as a Swing Bridge, and what this bridge does

is it actually pivots on this drum.

And so the entire bridge from tower to tower disconnects,

and actually pivots 90 degrees to let boat traffic

come in on either side.

So to build this bridge,

they had to create a man-made island

in the middle of the river,

which leaves 150 ft on either side,

so that this bridge could have this drum,

this central support.

So swing bridges are much longer lasting

than other kinds of movable bridges like draw bridges,

or lift bridges, or even retractable bridges,

because the machinery is unstressed in its closed position,

because they break the span in half essentially.

The others have to deal with the span

and then the span as it's moving,

which puts a lot of live load on it.

The bridge is essentially just a Pratt truss.

Pratt truss is essentially a truss

that's taller in the middle and angles down at the ends.

And each vertical bay is divided by a single diagonal,

that's a Pratt truss.

So the Macombs is basically a Pratt truss,

but typically, Pratt trusses are not supported

in the center like this one is.

And what I find interesting about the design,

which was done by A.P. Boller, Alfred Pancoast Boller,

is that he expresses that central support

with this double vertical here in the middle

with those little finials at the top,

and then with these very strong diagonals here,

where he almost creates another plane

and it almost looks like it's opening out.

And at the ends of the bridges

are these somewhat diminutive towers

that almost look like little fairytale towers

out of something the Grimm Brothers would write.

So not as famous as the Brooklyn Bridge, obviously,

but it was memorialized by Edward Hopper

in some of his paintings early in the 20th century.

In fact, Boller designed a number of these sorts of bridges,

and they sort of stitch across the Harlem River

and connect Manhattan with the Bronx.

So let's talk about how the Macombs Dam Bridge got its name.

So going all the way back to the early 1800s,

Alexander Macomb ran a ferry service

across at this very spot.

Later, his son took this over and then his son built a dam

across the Harlem River to the chagrin

of many other people along the river way,

especially those who needed to navigate it.

And he only left a seven foot wide lock as it were.

And so basically, only one boat at a time could go through.

In fact, it was such a nuisance that at some point,

a bunch of concerned citizens punched a hole in that bridge.

And actually, the New York State Supreme Court

sided with the people who breached and destroyed the bridge.

Now, let's talk about the oldest surviving bridge

in all of New York City, the High Bridge.

So the High Bridge crosses the Harlem River

at 174th Street in Manhattan.

Today, it's a pedestrian bridge, but in fact,

it was built as an aqueduct.

So it starts 40 miles upstate at the Croton Reservoir,

and works its way down and crosses the Harlem River,

and terminates at what was this Egiptoid-looking reservoir

at 42nd and 5th Avenue where the main branch

of the New York Public Library today stands.

This bridge was super important when it was built,

because it brought fresh water to Manhattan.

Before that, most of the water was sourced locally,

and quite often was polluted.

And in fact, there were cholera outbreaks,

because the water was so dirty in most of Manhattan.

So if you subscribe to the theory,

that it's the water that makes the bagels and the pizza

so fantastic in New York,

then one can really appreciate the High Bridge.

So even though it's designed to look like a Roman aqueduct,

where the water runs in a trough on top of the arches,

running at the top of this bridge

actually are pipes that supply water to New York City.

And those pipes are covered by five feet of Earth,

so that they don't freeze in the winter.

And in the distance, you can see the High Bridge Tower,

which was actually a water tower

that contained 47,000 gallons of water.

Those pipes are supported by these stone arches,

that sort of walk across the river,

and there's seven of them with 80 foot spans

that actually cross the river, and then there's eight more

with 50 foot spans that actually cross on the land.

This is the oldest surviving bridge in New York.

And when it was built, there was sort of parkland

on either side and it was a popular recreation spot

for many New Yorkers.

Before the Brooklyn Bridge

became this great tourist attraction,

actually, it was the High Bridge,

that was a tourist attraction in Upper Manhattan.

This bridge was designed by John Bloomfield Jervis

who was the chief engineer of the Erie Canal.

The Erie Canal runs from Buffalo and Lake Erie

all the way east to Albany,

and then down straight south to New York,

and it made the New York Harbor

the economic powerhouse that it is.

And it was created by DeWitt Clinton

who was the governor of New York at the time,

and he did two great things, DeWitt Clinton.

He did the Erie Canal

and he did the 1811 Commissioners' Plan,

which laid out the grid for the city of New York.

So this is how the bridge looked

when it was originally built in 1848.

But during World War I,

shipping traffic on the river increased greatly,

and these arches became somewhat of a hazard to the boats.

In 1928, they eliminated the arches across the water,

and put in a huge steel arch bridge.

It's unfortunate because the beauty of the High Bridge

was that sort of rhythmic repetition of those arches,

and that's all been destroyed by this huge 450 foot arch,

even though one could certainly understand

the reasons why they did it, but it's still a shame.

Today, it's a pedestrian bridge and it's sort of returned

to what it originally was

in that it's sort of just a novelty to walk across it.

Next up, the busiest bridge in the world,

the George Washington Bridge.

The less than 50 years after the Brooklyn Bridge

did the seemingly impossible job of spanning the East River,

the George Washington Bridge more than doubled this span

across the Hudson River.

And in this case, it was done as a pure suspension bridge.

So this is a view looking from the Manhattan side

sort of northwest across to New Jersey.

And you could see the Manhattan Tower here

with the Little Red Lighthouse

just below it at Jeffrey's Hook.

And then these towers are 570 ft tall,

and they drape a cable that's three feet in diameter

across from the towers and from those cables

that they drop than other cables

that supports the roadway,

200 ft above the water at high tide.

Builders and engineers had been dreaming about spanning

the Hudson River for over 100 years,

but the technology just wasn't there.

Finally, in 1931, that was completed by Othmar Ammann

who was a lieutenant to Gustav Lindenthal,

the designer and engineer of the Hell Gate Bridge.

So the George Washington Bridge

connects Fort Lee, New Jersey to Upper Manhattan

at 178th Street.

And its two towers basically stand on the land,

unlike the Brooklyn Bridge where they're in the water.

So on the Manhattan side, the tower sits on the shoreline

just above the Little Red Lighthouse,

which we'll talk about later.

And on the New Jersey side, they built out into the river

just a bit to accommodate the New Jersey Tower.

The towers to the George Washington Bridge

are really unique in that originally,

they were designed by Cass Gilbert

who was a pretty famous architect.

In fact, he designed the Woolworth Building

in Lower Manhattan.

And they were originally supposed to be clad

in granite and concrete,

but it was the height of the depression

when this bridge was being built and money was tight.

And when these towers first went up and everyone saw

this muscular and robust steel structure,

they were kind of awed by it,

and they were like, Hey, let's just leave them as they are,

save some money, and leave this really expressive

piece of architecture on its own.

That decision actually led to the project coming in

under budget and ahead of schedule, something unheard of

for a public infrastructure project of this scale,

even back then.

So even though these towers looked super modern,

in fact, they were built at the end of the 1920s,

and that was before they had the technology

to do rolled steel.

So unlike a rolled piece of steel,

where you basically have a long I-beam that at the end

gets either welded or bolted to the other beam,

here, they'd have to build these towers

out of smaller pieces of steel.

And what that required was that those pieces

be riveted every few inches to other pieces,

and it's an incredible amount of labor.

Let's take a look at how it appeared

when it was first constructed.

And when the bridge was originally built,

it was a single roadway.

So these towers were so strong and robust looking,

but the roadway itself was super thin, which Ammann loved,

but most people were completely unnerved by,

and were almost afraid to drive across it.

It wasn't until 30 years later

that they built the second roadway.

Traffic had increased amazingly by then,

and as soon as the bridge was open,

it was overcrowded and it needed more lanes.

So they filled in the middle

and they decided to add a second roadway

beneath the first roadway.

So when it was first built, it was just six lanes,

but having added the second roadway, the lower roadway,

it is now 14 lanes,

and it's still the world's busiest bridge,

with 108 million vehicles crossing it every year.

When it opened in 1931, the original toll price

was just 50 cents to get into Manhattan.

By 1970s, it was $1.50.

And now, it's actually $16 to cross the bridge.

And if you're a truck,

it could cause up to $100 to cross the bridge.

And what all that adds up to is $1 million a day

in revenue for the Port Authority,

which is actually $365 million a year.

Just to put it into context,

this bridge costs $59 million to build.

So basically, every two months, it makes back what it costs.

One fun little fact about the George Washington Bridge

is that on the Manhattan side,

it actually terminates at an uptown bus station,

which was designed by Pier Luigi Nervi,

the great Italian engineer and architect.

And what's interesting about that

is it's one of the best buildings in Manhattan,

and no one's even heard of it.

So the Little Red Lighthouse,

which you could see here in this photo,

was there before the bridge was built.

And it was there to protect ships

from what's known as Jeffrey's Hook,

which a lot of ships would crash into,

because of the currents in the Hudson River.

And when they built the bridge,

originally, they were gonna knock it down,

but there was a bit of an outcry and it was saved.

And to this day, the Little Red Lighthouse remains

and it's the subject of a famous children's book.

So those are some of the most interesting bridges

of New York City.

Tell us what other bridges you'd like to see

in the comments below.

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