New York City's Bridges: George Washington Bridge (2)

One last look at New York City (well, New Jersey actually) and the George Washington Bridge. This photo (taken in 2002) shows preparations for painting the bridge's west tower. The tarp around the scaffolding may be required to prevent lead-based paint from entering the river. The steel towers are composed of arches above and below the bridge deck. The green cliffs behind each tower makes the bridge more attractive.

Note that two suspension cables hang from the top of each tower leg. The 107,000 miles of steel wire used for the suspension cables were manufactured by John Roebling & Sons, whose founder had designed the Brooklyn Bridge. Contractors were allowed to bid the job with either suspension cables or with suspension chains, which seems unthinkable now.

When the bridge was first built, the deck was supported by very thin (twelve-foot deep) plate girders under the roadway. The theory was that the enormous mass of the long deck would act as a stiffener to prevent large movements during windstorms. It may have been fortunate therefore, that they later put a lower deck on the bridge with a deep truss.

We've looked at every river crossing connected to Manhattan, but there are many other interesting bridges in the area. The Bayonne Bridge (1931), the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge (1939), the Throgs Neck Bridge (1961), and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (1964) were all designed by Othmar Ammann during the golden age of bridge engineering for New York City.

New York City's Bridges: George Washington Bridge (2) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

New York City's Bridges: George Washington Bridge

In contrast to the East and Harlem Rivers, there is only one bridge that crosses the Hudson River to Manhattan. The George Washington Bridge forms an important link in I-95/US-1 that speeds vehicles across the Hudson and through the most congested part of Manhattan. The bridge connects Fort Lee in New Jersey to the Washington Heights area of Manhattan. It was named after George Washington who unsuccessfully tried to prevent the British from entering Manhattan. After he failed, he quickly crossed from Fort Washington to Fort Lee where the bridge now stands.

The George Washington Bridge is an iconic landmark because of its huge skeletal towers. The design originally called for the towers to have a granite facade, but this was eventually abandoned, perhaps because the bridge was built during the Great Depression. When it was completed in 1931, it doubled the record for the longest suspension bridge with a main span of 3500 ft and with towers that were 650 ft tall. The Brooklyn Bridge was built in 1883 with a main span of 1600 ft and 280 ft towers. The Akashi Kaikyo Bridge was built in 1998 with a main span of 6500 ft and 930 ft towers.

The George Washington Bridge is owned by the Port Authority of New York, designed by Othmar H. Ammann, and with architectural support from Cass Gilbert. The bridge originally had six vehicle lanes and sidewalks. In 1946 two additional lanes were added in the middle of the deck. A lower deck was added in 1962, which gave the bridge a total of fourteen lanes (the most on any bridge) and allowing it to carry about 300,000 vehicles a day.

New York City's Bridges: George Washington Bridge by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

New York City's Bridges: Spuyten Duyvil Bridge

The Harlem River is a tidal strait that allows water to flow from the broad Hudson into the East River (the Hudson and East Rivers meet at the southern tip of Manhattan Island). The Spuyten Duyvil Swing Bridge is along the east bank of the Hudson River and blocks entry into the Harlem River when it is closed.

The term Spuyten Duyvil refers to the swift running creek that was at this location before it was dredged by the US Army Corps of Engineers to create the current north end of the Harlem River. The name means 'devils spout' and refers to the wild currents that flowed through the creek.

The current bridge at the north entrance to the Harlem River was built in 1899 to replace an earlier bridge built by the New York and Hudson River Railroad. The current bridge has a 290 ft long swing span, 610 ft of total length, and only 5 ft of vertical clearance when it is closed.

Trains stopped using the bridge in 1982, it was struck by a ship the following year, but it was repaired for use by Amtrak a few years later to carry passenger trains to and from Pennsylvania Station.

New York City's Bridges: Spuyten Duyvil Bridge by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.