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00front_Layout 1 1/14/2010 3:00 PM Page i Crossing the Hudson 00front_Layout 1 1/14/2010 3:00 PM Page ii 00front_Layout 1 1/14/2010 3:00 PM Page iii Crossing the Hudson Historic Bridges and Tunnels of the River donald e. wolf Rivergate Books an imprint of rutgers university press new brunswick, new jersey, and london 00front_Layout 1 1/14/2010 3:00 PM Page iv Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wolf, Donald E., 1927– Crossing the Hudson : historic bridges and tunnels of the river / Donald E. Wolf. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978–0–8135–4708–4 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Bridges—Hudson River (N.Y. and N.J.)—History. 2. Tunnels— Hudson River (N.Y. and N.J.)—History. I. Title. tg25.h83w65 2010 624.209747´3—dc22 2009016198 A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2010 by Donald E. Wolf All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 100 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854–8099. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. Visit our Web site: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu Manufactured in the United States of America Frontispiece: Erecting the 500-foot-long, 1,800-ton truss assembly that would complete the superstructure framing for the second Newburgh-Beacon Bridge in August 1980. Photograph reproduced by permission of the American Bridge Company, which fabricated and erected the steel for the bridge. 00front_Layout 1 1/14/2010 3:00 PM Page v contents list of illustrations / vii acknowledgments / ix Introduction / 3 chapter 1 Waterford, the First Bridge / 7 2 Steam and a Bridge at Troy / 17 3 Three Railroad Bridges at Albany / 30 4 The Last of the Railroad Bridges: Poughkeepsie and Castleton / 49 5 The Railroad Tunnels / 72 6 The Bear Mountain Bridge / 92 7 The Holland and Lincoln Tunnels / 106 8 The George Washington Bridge / 127 9 The Mid-Hudson Bridge / 151 10 The Rip Van Winkle Bridge / 165 11 The Tappan Zee Bridge / 177 12 The Kingston-Rhinecli¤ Bridge / 196 13 The Newburgh-Beacon Bridges / 210 Epilogue / 227 notes / 235 index / 259 00front_Layout 1 1/14/2010 3:00 PM Page vi 00front_Layout 1 1/14/2010 3:00 PM Page vii illustrations 1. Map Showing the Historic Bridges and Tunnels of the Hudson / 6 2. The Superstructure of the Waterford-Lansingburgh Bridge / 15 3. The Livingston Avenue Bridge at Albany / 38 4. The Maiden Lane Bridge at Albany / 43 5. The Albany-Greenbush Bridge / 48 6. Erecting the Steel for the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge / 66 7. The Completed Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge / 67 8. The Alfred H. Smith Bridge at the Castleton Cuto¤ / 70 9. The Bear Mountain Bridge / 103 10. The George Washington Bridge, before the Addition of Its Second Level / 149 11. The Mid-Hudson Bridge in Winter / 162 12. The Rip Van Winkle Bridge / 175 13. The Tappan Zee Bridge / 194 14. The Kingston-Rhinecli¤ Bridge / 208 15. Erecting the Steel for the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge / 225 16. The Newburgh-Beacon Bridges / 226 vii 00front_Layout 1 1/14/2010 3:00 PM Page viii 00front_Layout 1 1/14/2010 3:00 PM Page ix acknowledgments In writing Crossing the Hudson, I have not ignored the technical elegance or the physical beauty of the bridges and tunnels that cross the river, as they are clearly the very essence of these wonderful structures, but I’ve left the detailed exposition and analysis of those qualities to others. My objec- tive here is simply to provide a history for the reader who wants to know where, why, when, and how these structures were built, something about the people who designed and built them, and perhaps a little about the social, political, and technical problems that had to be solved before, while, and sometimes after the structures were built. Of course, few resources could be more vital to the process of ferreting out all that information than the libraries, museums, and historical societies that ensure the preservation and availability of the relevant manuscripts, books, and other materials, and I’m well into the debt of many of those institutions and of the good people who make them work. In the Hudson Valley alone these places include the New York State Library at Albany, a superbly managed institution whose sta¤ and collec- tions are hard to match anywhere. At the south end of the river, the New York City Public Library System, most especially its Science, Industry, and Business Library (SIBL) division, was invaluable, largely because of the special e¤orts of Marguerite A. Nealon, whose title there is Science Bibli- ographer. But not all the libraries that contributed so e¤ectively were in the Hudson Valley. The Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, Missouri, has a vast collection of historically important engineering and scientific material that was central to my research into the histories of these bridges and tunnels, and the energetic and always thorough help of Christine Taft at that library was what made it all work for me. ix 00front_Layout 1 1/14/2010 3:00 PM Page x x Acknowledgments The Hudson Valley is lined with other libraries and historical societies that contributed to various parts of the story. In Waterford, where Brad Utter is the capable and amiable director of the Waterford Museum and Cultural Center, I found an abundance of material about the river’s first bridge. Just downstream, in Troy, Elsa Prigozy, a volunteer at the Rensse- laer County Historical Society, made it easy to secure what I needed to know about the Green Island Bridge (the river’s first railroad bridge); and the nearby Folsom Library at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) was another valued resource in Troy. The Vedder Library in Coxsackie, the Hudson Public Library, the Catskill Public Library, the Kingston Public Library, the Cornwall Public Library, and the Adriance Memorial Library in Poughkeespie were all first-class sources, especially for material about the four bridges that cross their long section of the river. In Newburgh, Rita Forrester in the Local History Room of the Newburgh Free Library was tireless in making available to me an abundance of helpful material about the Newburgh-Beacon bridges. Michelle Figliomeni at the Orange County Historical Society was able to provide material about the Harriman fam- ily and its role in building the Bear Mountain Bridge that would not have been available anywhere else. In Peekskill, Tarrytown, and Nyack, the Field Library, the Warner Library, and the Nyack Public Library, respectively, were essential sources for probing the detailed histories of the Bear Moun- tain Bridge and the Tappan Zee Bridge. For the George Washington Bridge and for the tunnels that carry railroads and motor vehicles into and out of New York City, nothing can match the collections of the New York Public Library. Beyond the consistently high-quality material made available by all those libraries and historical societies, I occasionally discovered a source of such extraordinary value that it deserves to be individually acknowledged. One of those was Jameson Doig’s Empire on the Hudson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), a gracefully written account of the history of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Doig’s insights into and de - scription of the growth and development of the Port Authority provided a context for understanding how this interstate agency designed and built its bridges and tunnels, and his book acquired a special value after most of the Port Authority’s historical records were destroyed on September 11, 2001. The other book that proved to be equally valuable to me as an excep- tional source was Henry Petroski’s Engineers of Dreams (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995). A clearly gifted writer and engineer, Petroski guides his reader 00front_Layout 1 1/14/2010 3:00 PM Page xi Acknowledgments xi through the professional lives and problems of some of the most important of the country’s bridge designers, providing a wonderfully well-informed context for studying and understanding the work that was done on the Hudson. Not every source for Crossing the Hudson is a book or an article. Some of the details came directly from especially knowledgeable informants, and they certainly deserve to be thanked here. One was Frank Griggs, an RPI- educated professional engineer from Rexford, New York, who has long experience in bridge design and is himself writing a book about the Water- ford Bridge. Another was Richard Barrett, a historian whose knowledge of Albany, especially where it relates to the railroads of the region, is exhaus- tive. Barrett’s contribution of information and of illustrations from his own collection is immensely appreciated. Still another person who provided valuable help was Dietrich Warner of the Rosendale Cement Company; his knowledge of the cements used in the early nineteenth century was use- ful and appreciated. The advice of Michael Cegelis, senior vice president of American Bridge Company, was tremendously helpful in researching the work done by his company on several of the river’s bridges, and the recollections and research of engineer Ted Seeley were equally valuable. Seeley worked for the Snare Corporation when that company was doing foundation work for the first Newburgh-Beacon Bridge, and his father ran the company for a while, so his recollections had a special authenticity. Barney Martin’s knowledge of the engineering on the Newburgh-Beacon bridges was uniquely helpful.

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