Queensboro Bridge

History and architecture

After the close of the Civil War, there were a number of proposals calling for the construction of bridges across the East River to facilitate communications between York City, the City of Brooklyn and the farms of Queens and Long Island. Among the earliest bridges planned, and the first one to be built, was the Brooklyn Bridge Island.

A majority of the board of consulting engineers who studied the various plans agreed that the proposal drawn up by Charles MacDonald, Of the Delaware Bridge Company, would be the most economical and practical to construct, MacDonald' s proposal for a cantilever type bridge to span the river was the type that was actually built almost thirty years later.

The City, after the consolidation of 1898, began to acquire the land for the bridge and, in September of 1901, work on the bridge began. The Pennsylvania Steel Company contracted to furnish the steel superstructure for the bridge in accordance with the plans and specifications of the Department of Bridges, under the Commissionership of the engineer, Gustav Lindenthal and of the architect Henry Hornbostel. because of modifications made in the original plans, the bridge was not completed until June 15, 1906. It was opened to traffic on March 30, 1909 and to pedestrians on June 12, 1909.

Hornbostel's design for the bridge appears to have been influenced by Jean Resal's Pont Mirabeau in Paris which was completed in 1895, while Hornbostel was a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Montgomery Schuyler, the noted architectural critic, described the two outside spans of the Queensboro Bridge as having "the shape of the universally admired curves of the Pont Mirabeau" in The Architectural Record of October, 1905.

The Queensboro Bridge is a "through--type" cantilever in which the roadway passes between the towers and trusses as opposed to a "deck-type" cantilever in which the roadway is carried on top of the cantilever, The bridge lacks the more usual type of suspended span that would normally Connect the ends of the cantilever arms and is designed instead with only one hinge in each of the main, spans. The cantilevers of' each side of the towers, consist of a chain of flat eye-bars at the tops and diagonal and vertical stiffeners beneath them, all supporting the deck of the bridge. The length of the bridge is over 7,000 feet and it has a clearance of 135 feet above high water level.

When the bridge was first opened, there were four elevated railroad tracks for the Second Avenue "'El*' on the upper level; four trolley tracks and a roadway ran on the lover level. The trolley terminal and four of the original five entrances and exit kiosks still remain on the Manhattan side of the bridge. The fifth kiosk and the two monumental candelabra have been removed to be refurbished and restored and then re-erected as an entrance to the Brooklyn Children's Museum.

The large areas below the bridge, known as the Cathedral, are notable for their Guastavino tile vaulting. Since access to the City's facilities on Roosevelt Island was a necessity, each of the towers of the piers on the island was equipped with an elevator accommodating both passengers and horses, a stairway and a comfort station, The anchorage piers were also provided with stairways for pedestrian access near York Avenue in Manhattan and from Vernon Avenue in Long Island City.