New York City's Bridges: Madison Avenue Bridge

I think we're going to get tired of Harlem River swing bridges before we ever reach the Hudson. It's funny that people in Paris can get all their needs met living next to a river crossed by low arch bridges while New Yorkers require a dozen movable bridges across the Harlem River.

The Madison Avenue Bridge was designed by Alfred P. Boller and built in 1910 to replace an earlier swing bridge. It has a Y-shaped ramp on the Manhattan side that carries Madison Avenue and 138th Street traffic to and from the Bronx. The main span is 300 ft long with about 25 ft of clearance over the river. It has four vehicle lanes, two sidewalks, and carries about 50,000 vehicles a day.

Like the other Harlem River swing bridges it has a wide hexagonal fender protecting the center pier. It has gazebos at each corner, one of which has perhaps been enlarged to measure the water level. There is also a building for the operator above the pivot pier. The center span is a truss very similar to the center span of most the swing bridges across the Harlem River.

New York City's Bridges: Madison Avenue Bridge by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.