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Toast The City's Least Respected Bridge Tonight!
By
Jen Carlson
Published Dec 31, 2009
Modified Dec 31, 2009
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By
Jen Carlson
Published Dec 31, 2009
Modified Dec 31, 2009
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Did you know the Manhattan Bridge has been known, to some, as the Rodney Dangerfield of our city's bridges since the 1980s? Today, 100 years after it officially opened, the NY Times profiles why the structure gets no respect.
The city has spent $830 million on repairing the bridge in just the last 20 years — perhaps one of the reasons no re-enactment of the opening day ceremonies is planned. Upon its opening, the mayor at the time, George B. McClellan Jr., led “a little cavalcade of automobiles and carriages" across the bridge. But the current secretary of the bridge commission, M. Barry Schneider, says there's no big ceremony to mark the occasion, though they are "emailing everyone who had had a hand in its work, urging a toast to the bridge at 9 p.m." He notes they celebrated the 100 year anniversary back in October, and adds that the bridge wasn't even really completed on December 31st all those years ago; once the mayor finished his ceremonial ride, he declared: "Now finish the damn bridge," though perhaps a bit more eloquently.
One of the major engineering flaws was that the subway tracks were placed on the outside, not the middle of the bridge — this used to cause the bridge to drop four to six feet whenever a subway went over it (now it's a bit less... phew!). And of course there's always that beautiful sway, caught on time lapse — if nothing else, toast to this at 9 p.m. tonight:
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100 years
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Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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