The Henry Hudson Bridge Opens

On December 12, 1936, the Henry Hudson Bridge opened over the Spuyten Duyvil, joining Inwood in Manhattan to the Bronx for Robert Moses's new Henry Hudson Parkway. The American Bridge Company built the original single-deck span for just under five million dollars, and when it opened it was the longest plate girder and fixed arch bridge on Earth. Moses had pushed for this Hudson River route over other options partly because the land for the parkway was his for free and he could build it with federal labor. A second deck went up two years later, paid for out of tolls, but the 1936 opening is what actually stitched the two boroughs together by car for the first time.