Walkabout: The Manhattan Bridge, Part 2

Read Part 1 of this story.

The Manhattan Bridge is the third bridge to cross the East River, joining Brooklyn to Manhattan. Unlike the second bridge, the Williamsburg, this bridge, originally called Bridge Number 3, was built to specifically take some of the traffic flow from lower Manhattan to the Brooklyn piers area.

Like many great New York City institutions and projects, the bridge was wrapped up in politics, patronage and controversy. The first designer, Gustav Lindenthal, was replaced by Leon Moisieff, after a change of mayors.

Moisieff designed his bridge using an engineering concept called deflection theory, which reduced the amount of materials needed to build a lighter and shallower stiffening truss. The bridge is braced in only two directions, allowing the towers to flex, reducing bending moments and requiring smaller foundations under the tower.

Its large cables are 21 in diameter, the largest in the world when spun. The bridge was constructed in record time, mostly so that Mayor George McClellan could claim it under his administration, and it had a show opening, on a freezing December 31, 1909, the last day of the year, and the last day of McClellan’s term. Since the road wasn’t finished, they laid temporary planks across the deck to enable vehicles to cross.

But it wasn’t done that December day. The pedestrian walkway wasn’t finished until 1910, and the first trains rumbled across in 1912. The venerable architectural firm of Carrere and Hastings didn’t complete the Beaux Arts entryways to the bridge until 1916.

The Manhattan entrance, which was inspired by both Paris’ Porte St. Denis arch, and Bernini’s Colonnade at St. Peter’s in Rome, had a colored mosaic walkway within a large plaza leading to the bridge. Over one thousand families were evicted to make room for the plaza and the bridge anchorages below.

The arch features sculptures of Native Americans hunting buffalo, as well as other allegorical figures. On the Brooklyn side, a much simpler entrance with two enormous pedestals with statues by Daniel Chester French depicting allegorical female representations of Brooklyn and Manhattan, flanked the entrance to the bridge. Brooklyn was part of New York City for only fourteen years, and already getting slighted, no offense to Mr. French.

Carrere and Hastings also designed Art Nouveau style decorative elements for the ironwork, but their best work, mostly unnoticed by the average person, has to be the massive granite anchorages that tower over the streets in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.

They were initially designed by Henry Hornbostel to hold great auditoriums, and were designed with much decorative carved ornament. When Carrere and Hastings took over the project, they pared the designs down to simple arches over the street, with deep windowed recesses, and banded columns.

Each granite anchorage has enormous buttresses to counter the pull of the bridge on the cables. For Brooklynites, the anchorages are integral to the beauty of DUMBO. But that would be only appreciated years later.

As soon as the bridge was finally finished, problems developed. Like many multipurpose bridges, the Manhattan Bridge has train tracks as well as vehicular roads and pedestrian pathways. Most engineers and bridge designers tended to put those tracks in the center of the bridge, for stability, but not here.

The upper level of the bridge had two streetcar tracks in each direction, and the lower level also had four subway tracks, as well as three lanes of traffic, a pedestrian walkway, and later, a bike lane. Moisieff put both the subway and the streetcar tracks on the outside edges.

This caused great stress on the bridge, so that when trains were coming from both directions, the bridge would sway and twist. He also didn’t plan for the longer and heavier trains that were developed as the 20th century progressed. The twisting was at its worst when two trains entered the bridge at the same time from opposite directions. The roadway would dip four feet on the either side, north and south, for a total displacement of eight feet.

By the 1940’s, the streetcars were gone, and the bridge was reconfigured to hold seven lanes of vehicular traffic and four subway tracks. At that time, engineers knew the bridge was feeling the strain, and needed repair.

Many repairs to the cables, the stringers and the stiffening trusses were needed, and noted civil engineer and bridge designer David Steinman recommended that the subway tracks be removed, and a separate tunnel be built for them.

Leon Moisieff, the bridge’s main designer, had a setback of his own. His Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state, also designed with deflection theory, twisted too far and collapsed during a windstorm in 1940. Although he was respected for his designs on other bridges, this disaster destroyed his career.

Repairs to the bridge would become a necessity from the 1940’s onward, although that doesn’t mean they were done. Like most of NYC’s infrastructure, the city let the bridge deteriorate until it could no longer ignore it.

The majestic Manhattan Bridge, once lauded for its beauty, was being treated like a unwanted lover. In 1961, Robert Moses wanted to demolish the entire Manhattan entrance to the bridge in his plans for a Lower Manhattan Expressway that would connect the Manhattan Bridge and the Holland Tunnel.

He got the permission of the New York City Arts Commission to do so, but the roadway was never built. The furor over this decision was a factor in the creation of the Landmarks Preservation Commission a few years later.

On the Brooklyn side, D.C. French’s majestic statues and the rest of the entrance to the bridge were removed in the 1960’s to improve vehicular access to the bridge. The statues are now at the Brooklyn Museum.

In 1978, inspections showed that microscopic cracks occurred each time a train went over the bridge, and that these cracks were growing larger and larger. They also discovered a great deal of corrosion, so much so in the eye bars connecting one of the four suspension cables that they issued an emergency shutdown of the bridge.

There were cries to replace the bridge, but in the end, in 1982, an ambitious program to fix a lot of the structural issues and deferred maintenance was enacted.

Over the next 20 years, this program would involve the closing of the lower roadway for a year, the rerouting of trains for many years, the reinforcement of trusses, cables and other structural elements, and the reconstruction of the bike and pedestrian lanes, as well as the replacement of the lower roadway deck. All of this cost the city over $830 million, making this one of the most expensive bridges in history. To this day, the bridge still dips when two trains cross at the same time.

As for the beautiful plaza and entrance created by Carrere and Hastings, inspired by Paris and Rome, and erected in the civic spirit by the City Beautiful Movement, it’s a tattered shade of its former self.

Most of the park leading to the bridge that was built by taking homes in the early 1900’s was reclaimed by the building of Confucius Plaza in the 1960’s. As Christopher Gray says in a “Cityscape” article in the NY Times in 1996, Today the plaza of the Manhattan Bridge evokes not the City Beautiful but the sack of Rome.

Space in the plaza was given to the 5th Precinct for parking personal cars. The remainder of the park has surrendered to weeds and trash, and in 1996, sand and gravel that was piled against the arch was removed with a front end loader which gouged the granite. The arch and colonnade was landmarked in 1975, but not given any funds to repair or maintain it.

Today, many people are rediscovering the Manhattan Bridge. On the Brooklyn side, one of the arches in the anchorage has reopened, a magnificent classical space. I first walked across the bridge during the last transit strike, and found it thrilling and rather awe inspiring.

The walkway, being on the outside, allows for a fantastic view of the Brooklyn Bridge, as well as lower Manhattan, DUMBO, the East River, and the bridge itself. The view of the bridge from the streets of DUMBO is iconic as well.

I used to drive a commercial vehicle at my last job, so I couldn’t take the Brooklyn Bridge, and grew to love the Manhattan Bridge, which, if you timed it right, you could sail across to Manhattan in record time. It really is a beautiful bridge in its own right, in spite of costing more than the GNP of a small country. Bridge Number 3 is an integral part of Brooklyn and New York history.