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On March 30th, 1909, the Queensboro Bridge opened to traffic. Long Island City, and the rest of Queens, would never be the same. For the first time, vehicle traffic from eastern Long Island and Manhattan could move easily across the East River on Gustav Lindenthal’s new cantilever bridge, and the formerly independent Cities, Towns, and Villages of Western Long Island became suburbs. I know it’s difficult to conceive of Jackson Heights or Astoria as “suburbs,” but in the context of the early 20th century that’s what they were.

The Queensboro Bridge changed all of that, and Queens has never been the same since “The Great Machine” opened.

More after the jump…

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Old maps of Queens display a “Jane Street” nearby Jackson Avenue which is missing from post 1909 iterations. You’re looking at Jane Street – aka Queens Plaza – in the shot above. This was once of the concentrating point for all of Long Island’s light rail (once trolley, now subway) and automotive traffic on the northern side of the Newtown Creek. The Midtown Tunnel and the Triboro Bridge were still decades away when traffic began to flow to and from “New York” on this day in 1909, when Western Queens became Manhattan’s vestibule.

From Wikipedia:

The Queensboro Bridge, also known as the 59th Street Bridge, is a cantilever bridge over the East River in New York City that was completed in 1909. It connects the neighborhood of Long Island City in the borough of Queens with Manhattan, passing over Roosevelt Island. It carries New York State Route 25 and once carried NY 24 and NY 25A as well.

The Queensboro Bridge is the westernmost of the four East River spans that carry a route number: NY 25 terminates at the west (Manhattan) side of the bridge. It is commonly called the “59th Street Bridge” because its Manhattan end is located between 59th Street and 60th Streets.

The Queensboro Bridge is flanked directly on its northern side by the freestanding Roosevelt Island Tramway.

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When Queensboro opened, a significant amount of the traffic flowing across it were actually horse drawn wagons. Trolley lines ran down the bridge, and there was a vehicle elevator which carried trucks from the bridge down to the asylums and prisons on Blackwell’s/Welfare/Roosevelt Island. There used to be tolls on the bridge as well.

As a note, the bridge was given a name change a few years ago, which attached the name of former Mayor Ed Koch to it. I will start calling it the “Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge” when we begin to commonly hear references to the “Michael Bloomberg Brooklyn Bridge” or the “Rudy Giuliani Manhattan Bridge” on evening traffic reports.

Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman lives in Astoria and blogs at Newtown Pentacle.


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. Since the Mayor Whose Name Shall Not Be Named didn’t consider Queens a suitable site for his burial plot and made disparaging remarks about Queens residents, let’s hope that his name is one day no longer attached to our namesake bridge.