On this day in New York · October 25, 1931
The George Washington Bridge Opens
It came in eight months early, cost sixty million dollars, and the first two people across it were kids on roller skates.
The facts
- Dedicated
- October 24, 1931
- Opened to traffic
- October 25, 1931, eight months ahead of schedule
- Chief engineer
- Othmar Ammann
- Main span
- 3,500 feet, the longest suspension bridge span in the world at opening
The George Washington Bridge was dedicated on October 24, 1931, and opened to traffic the next day, linking Fort Lee, New Jersey to Washington Heights across the Hudson River. Chief engineer Othmar Ammann designed it with a 3,500-foot main span, making it the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time, and it was finished eight months ahead of schedule. Roughly 30,000 people turned out for the opening ceremony, where New Jersey governor Morgan Foster Larson and New York governor Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke while military planes flew overhead. Two elementary school kids on roller skates beat every car across, and by the end of the first 24 hours more than 56,000 cars and 100,000 pedestrians had crossed. It replaced a ferry system that had shuttled Jersey commuters across the river for generations and instantly rewired how the two states connected.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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The structure is so pure, so resolute, so regular that here, finally, steel architecture seems to laugh.
Le Corbusier, describing the bridge's towers, as quoted in its Wikipedia article
Source: Wikipedia -
The first people to cross the George Washington Bridge were reportedly two elementary school students who roller-skated across the bridge from the New York side.
Wikipedia, on the bridge's opening
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
It ended the ferry era between Jersey and Manhattan overnight and proved a suspension bridge could be both a working crossing and something people would later call the most beautiful bridge in the world.
Sources
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