The Manhattan Bridge is a suspension bridge in New York City that crosses the East River and connects the two boroughs of Lower Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn. The bridge, which opened on December 31, 1909 but was only completed a few months later, was the last of the three suspension bridges built over the East River, after the Brooklyn Bridge and the Williamsburg Bridge. Today, on its two levels, it has a total of four tracks for the New York City Subway, seven lanes for motor vehicle traffic, and a footpath and a cycle path.
Like its predecessor, the Manhattan Bridge has pylons and decking
made of steel, but appears much lighter, due only in part to the
architectural design of its exterior. Its towers, consisting of only two
vertical pillars, are each combined into a portal by a neo-Gothic
pointed arch and a traverse. When viewed from the side, the towers are
no wider than the vertical pillars, leading to their designation as
two-dimensional towers. On the trusses there are rather inconspicuous
housings for the suspension cables, on which round shapes reminiscent of
pine cones were arranged for purely architectural reasons, which
otherwise have no function. Four suspension cables run over the towers,
to which the roadway girder is attached with vertical hangers. The
anchorages for the suspension cables are located in large structures at
the beginning of the ramps that reach far into the city and had to be
kept flat because of the railway tracks.
The bridge has two
levels: on the upper level there are two lanes for motor vehicles on
each side. The lower level contains three car lanes in the middle, two
subway tracks for lines B, D, N and Q arranged at the edges, and a
footpath and a cycle path on the very outside. The three lanes of the
lower level could previously be opened for different directions as
required, but since 2015 they have been permanently in the direction of
Manhattan.
The Manhattan Bridge and Williamsburg Bridge are the
only two bridges over the East River in New York City that still carry
both rail and road traffic.
The bridge is used daily by 320,000
subway passengers, 75,000 motor vehicles and 3,000 cyclists and
pedestrians.
The beginning of the entrance ramp in Manhattan at
the intersection of Bowery and Canal Streets has been marked since 1916
by a colonnaded archway designed by architects Carrère and Hastings. The
22 m high archway is inspired by the Porte Saint-Denis in Paris, the
elliptical colonnade was inspired by St. Peter's Square in the Vatican.
The homes of over a thousand families were cleared for the construction
of the square.
On the Brooklyn side there were two allegories
depicting the two boroughs, but they had to make way for traffic and
have since been placed in the Brooklyn Museum.
The neighborhood
at the entrance ramps on the Brooklyn side has acquired the designation
Dumbo - Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.
The bridge is 1856 m (6090 ft) long including the approach ramps,
according to other sources 2089 m (6855 ft). The length from tie-back to
tie-back is 890 m (2920 ft). Its pylons are 98 m (322 ft) high. The
wingspan is 448 m (1470 ft). The four suspension cables with a diameter
of around 53 cm are parallel wire ropes manufactured using the air-jet
spinning process. At the time of opening, they were the strongest
suspension cables in the world. A total of 628 hangers are attached to
them, which carry the 36.6 m wide bridge deck. For the hangers, two wire
ropes were routed next to each other over the fastening sleeves on the
suspension cables, so that four ropes each form a hanger.
For the
bridge, Leon S. Moisseiff applied the deflection theory that goes back
to Joseph Melan for the first time. After that it was possible to plan a
much lighter construction for the bridge, which explains the
two-dimensional towers, which should be flexible in the longitudinal
direction.
This construction method, which was still in its
infancy, and the arrangement of the trains on the outside led to
considerable torsion of the bridge girder, which later required
extensive renovation work.
A first design for a suspension bridge was created in 1899 by Richard
S. Buck. A newly elected city government appointed Gustav Lindenthal
Commissioner of Bridges in 1902, who presented his own design, which was
not accepted. His second chain bridge design was hotly debated, but
shelved after George B. McClellan, Jr. was elected mayor and Lindenthal
was removed from office in 1904. New Bridge Commissioner George E. Best
appointed Othniel Foster Nichols as chief engineer for the new bridge.
He chose a design by Leon S. Moisseiff, an employee of the Bridge
Department, for a suspension bridge planned for the first time according
to the deflection theory, which could be significantly lighter than
previous bridges. His plan envisaged two subway tracks on the outer
sides of the bridge, which were framed by four Warren trusses arranged
directly under the suspension cables to reinforce the bridge deck. The
Warren trusses were also used for the first time in a suspension bridge.
Two tram tracks each were planned on a further level above the subway
tracks. In the middle between the tracks there were four lanes for road
traffic. During the construction period, Ralph Modjeski was appointed
consulting engineer by O.F. Nichols, who also surveyed the work on the
Manhattan Bridge. The suspension cables were spun in a record time of
just four months.
On December 31, 1909, Mayor McClellan's last
day on the job, the grand opening took place, although the subway and
streetcar tracks were still missing, after responsibility for them had
been transferred from the Bridge Department to a Department of
Transportation. The first footpath across the bridge was opened in July
1910 and the first trains crossed the bridge in September 1912. The
bridge cost a total of $31 million.
The subway traffic arranged
on the outer sides of the bridge, with trains growing longer and heavier
over time, caused vibrations and twists that could reach 2.4 m (8 ft)
when two trains passed opposite ends of the bridge at the same time.
When the tram tracks were replaced by roadways in the 1940s, extensive
repair and reinforcement measures had to be carried out. A 1978
inspection found extensive cracks and corrosion damage, leading to the
bridge's complete closure. An $834 million renovation program finally
began in 1982, during which many parts of the bridge will be replaced
and strengthened. In particular, girders were installed to make the
bridge more rigid, the suspension cables were re-sheathed and all
hangers were replaced. The program should be completed in the summer of
2013. A new footpath was opened on the west side of the bridge in June
2001, which was also used by cyclists until a new cycle path was opened
on the east side in summer 2004.
After the September 11, 2001
terrorist attacks, the bridge was closed to all traffic except emergency
services for a week. Subsequently, to reduce traffic congestion in
Manhattan, HOV restrictions were introduced. This means that only cars
with at least two occupants were allowed.
In 2009, the year of
its centenary, the Manhattan Bridge was designated a National Historic
Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
The bridge was built using track intended for the Brooklyn Rapid
Transit Company (BRT). However, at the time the bridge opened, none of
the connecting routes were in place.
Trams
Two transit
companies used the later subway tracks in the preliminary operation with
streetcars: The Manhattan Bridge Three Cent Line drove from 1912 or 1910
on the eastern subway tracks. In direct competition, the Brooklyn and
North River Railroad used the western subway tracks for its Brooklyn and
North River Line beginning in 1915 or 1912. The latter train was powered
by submerged center current rails on the bridge and in Manhattan, where
overhead wires had been banned by law since the Great Snowstorm of 1888,
and in Brooklyn from overhead wires. North River means the section of
the Hudson River running at the level of New York City; the streetcars
ran across the island of Manhattan.
In 1915, streetcars were
moved from the lower subway tracks to the upper lanes. The Brooklyn and
North River Line ceased operations in 1919 and the Three Cent Line in
1929.
Subway
The Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT) opened
the bridge tracks on June 22, 1915. They were part of their Brooklyn
Loop Line concept: trains coming from Brooklyn were to open up Lower
Manhattan, and later also Midtown Manhattan, and then go back to
Brooklyn or Queens without time-consuming turns that would reduce
transport performance. In addition to the three bridges, the BRT
operated three tunnel routes that still run under the East River today
(Montague Street Tunnel, 14th Street Tunnel and 60th Street Tunnel).
After the bankruptcy of BRT at the end of 1917, operations were
transferred to the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT) in 1923.
The Brooklyn end of the bridge connects to the four-track Fourth
Avenue Line, which was joined by the Brighton Beach Line in 1920. In
Manhattan, the western tracks led from 1915 directly to what was then
the Chambers Street terminus under the Municipal Building, a seat of the
city government opposite City Hall. Since 1917, the eastern tracks
connected the Manhattan Bridge Line with the Broadway Line to Midtown
Manhattan.
In the 1950s to 1960s the connections were
reorganized. First of all, the connections to the De Kalb Avenue
junction station on the Brooklyn side were upgraded to make them more
efficient. For the Chrystie Street Connection, which opened in Manhattan
in 1967, the east bridge tracks were connected to the Sixth Avenue Line
and the west to the Broadway Line, while the connecting curve to the
Chambers Street subway station, which had become meaningless in the
1960s, was cut without replacement.
The subway trains running on
the right and left outside of the bridge caused the bridge to sway. Due
to a lack of maintenance work by the New York City Department of
Transportation, the route has often had to be closed in the past.
Because the eastern tracks were being used more, they had to be closed
for the first time from 1986 to 1988. The western tracks were closed in
1988 and 1990, initially thought to be temporary, but this lasted until
July 22, 2001. The eastern tracks were closed during off-peak times in
1995, but no trains were allowed to run there at all in 2001. It wasn't
until February 22, 2004 that both sides reopened.
The Manhattan Bridge has also been used as a backdrop in some motion
pictures:
Sergio Leone's gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America
(Noodles walking his gang down an alley when he was young, with the
bridge as a background, also featured on the DVD cover)
Roland
Emmerich's science fiction film Independence Day (approach of an alien
ship to New York)
Tony Scott's thriller The Kidnapping of the Pelham
Subway 123 (final scene)
The Manhattan Bridge can be seen on the
following movie posters:
Sergio Leone's gangster epic Once upon a
time in America
Joseph Kosinski's science fiction film Oblivion
Mark Mann's film Threesome - One Night in New York
4.3.2.1 by Noel
Clarke and Mark Davis