Oct. 24, 2013 The George Washington Bridge Opens for Business George Washington Bridge For nearly a century, engineers could not quite solve the challenge of building a safe, reliable yet massive bridge connecting New York City with New Jersey. Nor could they agree where to put it. One bridge builder wanted it at midtown Manhattan. It was finally decided to place it at 179th Street, a narrower site near two ports—Jerseys Fort Lee and Fort Washington in New York. During the Revolutionary War, Gen. George Washington traversed the two strongholds to evacuate Manhattan after unsuccessfully preventing the British from invading the island. Swiss engineer Othmar Ammann conceived a double-deck suspension bridge that not only solved the puzzle of how to effectively span the Hudson River but also was an aesthetic gem of exposed 570-feet steel towers, crisscross bracing and a 3,500-foot span that made it the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time (surpassing the 1,850-foot span of the Ambassador Bridge, which connects Detroit with Ontario, Canada). The original cost estimate was $75 million. Construction began in 1927. Among the engineering feats required to complete the task: The four main cables are really a single strand that was carried 61 times back and forth across the river; 260,000 tons of concrete were needed to anchor the cables on the New York side (in Jersey, the cables are embedded into the Palisades rock overlooking the river). The bridge was opened on this day in 1931. Today more than 275,000 cars traverse its14 lanes daily.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 04:15:11 +0000
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