Secondary Source

Between 1901 and 1903, the New York City Department of Bridges presented plans for a new swing bridge at 207th Street (Fordham Road) before the Board of Estimate. Gustav Lindenthal, the commissioner of the newly created New York City Department of Bridges, favored a lift bridge, then a new development in bridge engineering. The city was not eager to spend on this expensive design, and when the opportunity was presented to make use of the original Broadway Bridge span (which was about to be replaced by a dual-deck swing span), the city seized it. In August 1903, the War Department approved plans for the bridge, provided that allowances were made for navigable vessels at Fordham Landing, and the Board of Estimate subsequently approved the bridge.

Alfred P. Boller, who designed the Madison Avenue, 145th Street and Macombs Dam swing spans, created the design for the University Heights Bridge. In November 1903, work began on dredging and building the center pier on which the draw span was to rest. The center pier and side piers were constructed of masonry. The steel draw span, which was originally constructed over the Harlem River Ship Canal in 1895, was lifted from its pier, floated down the river and lifted onto the new center pier in June 1906. New machinery was installed to control the draw span.

June 13 -- Dr. D.B. Steinman, designer of the St. John's Bridge, chose a gothic style of architecture with the determined purpose of making the span his most beautiful work, "The gothic arch was made of stone in the mideval days because steel had not been developed. It is really more appropriate in steel. Until recently the public took it for granted that steel bridges had to be utilitarian and unattractive, but now the interest is turning to the development of forms of beauty in steel."

Though accustomed to having the type of bridge left to his discretion, Dr. Steinman & Robinson, Consulting Engineers, worked out and submitted to the county commissioners plans and estimates for both the suspension and the canti- lever forms before the former was finally chosen. His estimate showed that the suspension type, beside from being more suitable for the site, would be $640,000 cheaper than the cantilever style.

Ralph Modjeski, considered "America's greatest bridge builder", was born in Bochnia, near the city of Krakow, Poland on January 27, 1861. He immigrated to America at the age of 15 with his mother, famous Shakespearean actress, Helen Modjeska, in July, 1876. Even though Modjeski seemed destined to become an accomplished concert pianist, he went on instead to become a highly successful civil engineer and "one of the twentieth century's most famous designers and builders of bridges". In 1929, Modjeski was awarded the John Fritz Gold Medal, the highest American engineering medal, with a citation for his genius in combining strength and beauty. He was also honored by the Pennsylvania state legislature in 1966 by a resolution citing him as one of America's "greatest inventors".

We call the confluence of the Harlem and the East Rivers in New York City Hell's Gate. Dramatic, I suppose, but why not! A bridge opened over Hell's Gate in 1917. It's an arch of iron girders. The arch thickens at each end. It thins toward the center. You get a feeling of buoyancy looking at it.

Othmar Ammann, who designed the bridge, caught Hell for it. This, says writer Christopher Bonanos, was an age of ornament, gravity, solidity, and dignity. Ammann's design was imperfect in some ways. But its simplicity, lightness, and freedom signaled a new era in design.

Take a virtual walk across the Mid-Hudson Bridge!! Discover various facts about the bridge. Find out about attractions in the area of the Mid-Hudson Bridge. Learn about how the bridge was conceived, designed, and built.

The University Avenue Bridge, an impressive adaptation of modern classicism to a limestone-faced, concrete on steel double leaf bascule bridge, carries university Avenue across the Schuylkill River. Its sweeping monumental piers and towers with bridge operator's houses remain visible from many vantage points. This graceful span forms an integral part of its surrounding cityscape, and serves as a visual landmark along the Schuylkill River.

The University Avenue Bridge runs north/south across the Schuylkill River, and links University Avenue in West Philadelphia, with South 34th Street in the Grays Ferry section of South Philadelphia. The bridge which has a clear height of thirty feet, measures 536 feet in length, and 100 feet in width. Five lanes wide, it accommodates four lanes of traffic going in two directions. The bridge has a pedestrian walkway on either side.

David Bernard Steinman: Born on 11 June 1886 in Khomsk, Brest, Belarus. Deceased on 21 August 1960 in New York, New York, USA. Associated with the following firms:Formerly:Founder(s): Robinson & Steinman; Steinman, Boynton, Gronquist & Birdsall; Steinman, Boynton, Gronquist & London.

Cret’s plan shows that he had learned to manipulate the École’s graphic conventions and to put a program “in order” (see Fig. 13). The contrast between the mosaique, the tapestry of broken lines that represent decorative floor and ceiling patterns, and the poché, the more heavily inked lines that indicate structure, make clear that the arrangement is a linear succession of volumes, with two relatively narrow rooms bracketing the more ample one at the center. The heavy unbroken outline of the main space underscores the lack of windows and reliance on top lighting, and thus its use for paintings and works on paper. The mosaique is more than decoration; it visually interweaves the volumes and defines a broad axial promenade, or path of movement, from the entrance to what is presumably the sidelit sculpture gallery that opens to a cascade of stairs leading down to the garden of fragments. All the pieces of a good Beaux-Arts plan are here: the clear proportions of the independent volumes, the axial disposition of openings, the warp and weft of the details, and the telling use of the graphic conventions of poché and mosaique so the design appears at once simpler than the sum of its parts and more ample than one might expect of a small museum

This an historic occasion. Today we are gathered here to dedicate a famous pioneer structure -- the oldest cable suspension highway bridge in the world -- as a national monument. Because this span has played a dramatic and significant role in the development of bridge engineering, and because its outstanding record of more than a century of distinguished service is interwoven with the unfolding panorama of American history, it is altogether fitting and proper that the shrine to thrill and inspire future generations.

When this great structure -- the first bridge over the Ohio River -- was completed in 1849, it was truly notable achievement. Its span of 1,010 feet was by far the longest in the world, the first time human courage and resourcefulness had achieved a span exceeding one-thousand feet.

I'm looking at two photographs, both taken in late August, 1907. In one, a great cantilever structure extends almost 900 feet from its pier -- half a huge bridge over the St. Lawrence River -- 40 million pounds of structural steel reaching toward Quebec. The second photograph is not so pretty. It shows 40 million pounds of what looks like wet spaghetti, splashed across the ground, leading away from the pier and off into the water.

For eight years the Quebec bridge project had been under the direction of an American engineer. He was Theodore Cooper, the biggest name in bridge building. Cooper had never produced a true superlative, and his first move was to extend the span from 1600 to 1800 feet. That got the piers out of the water and on to dry land. But it also made this the largest cantilever span ever attempted.