Everything about The Washington Bridge totally explained
The
Washington Bridge carries six lanes of traffic (plus sidewalks on both sides) over the
Harlem River in
New York City between the boroughs of
Manhattan and
the Bronx, connecting
181st Street and
Amsterdam Avenue in the
Washington Heights section of Manhattan to University Avenue in the Bronx. Ramps at either end of the bridge connect to the
Trans-Manhattan Expressway and the
Cross-Bronx Expressway. The bridge is operated and maintained by the
New York City Department of Transportation. It once carried
U.S. Route 1, which now travels over the
Alexander Hamilton Bridge.
The total length of the bridge, including approaches, is . The parallel main spans of the steel arch bridge stretch over the Harlem River, providing of vertical clearance and of horizontal clearance. The tidal maximum (mean higher high water) is and extreme low water is -3.5 compared to mean lower low water.
This
two-hinged arch bridge was designed by William R. Hutton and Edward H. Kendall, based on a design submitted by C. C. Schneider that was pared down to bring the bridge's cost to $3 million. The bridge features steel-arch construction with two 510-foot-long main spans and masonry approaches. The Washington Bridge opened to pedestrian traffic on
December 1,
1888. The plan had been to open the bridge to vehicular traffic on
February 22,
1889 —
Washington's Birthday and the centennial anniversary of the first Presidency — but the full opening was delayed until December 1889.
After completion of the
George Washington Bridge in 1931, traffic off the Bridge into the Bronx traveled over the Washington Bridge. Starting in the 1940s, ramps were built to connect the western end of the bridge to the
178th Street and 179th Street Tunnels leading to the George Washington Bridge. This allowed traffic to and from New Jersey to bypass the congested local streets of upper Manhattan.
The
Alexander Hamilton Bridge was planned in the mid-1950s to provide a direct connection between
Robert Moses' proposed Trans-Manhattan and
Cross-Bronx Expressways and to accommodate the additional traffic resulting from the addition of the six-lane lower level to the George Washington Bridge. The completion of the Alexander Hamilton Bridge in 1963 diverted much of the traffic away from the Washington Bridge.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Washington Bridge'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://washington_bridge.totallyexplained.com">Washington Bridge Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
