New York City's Bridges: Alexander Hamilton Bridge

The Alexander Hamilton Bridge carries the Trans-Manhattan Expressway over the Harlem River from Washington Heights to the Bronx. The bridge is 2,375 ft long while the steel arch span over the Harlem River is 555 ft long. The bridge includes on and off ramps to the Major Deegan Expressway and to Harlem River Drive. Robert Moses (in the 1950s) planned this bridge project as part of I-95 in order to get 90% of the $21 million cost to be paid by the federal government.

I-95 crosses the Hudson River on the George Washington Bridge, crosses under parking lots and high-rise buildings as it goes across Manhattan, crosses the Harlem River on the Alexander Hamilton Bridge, and then crosses the Bronx as the Cross-Bronx Expressway. The Hudson River on the west side of Manhattan is 3600 ft wide and requires a suspension bridge to cross it. The Harlem River on the east side of Manhattan is about 400 ft wide and only requires a steel deck arch to cross it. Because I-95 is eight lanes wide, the Alexander Hamilton Bridge is actually two parallel arch structures with four steel ribs to support the wide deck. More information on this bridge is provided by NYC Roads.

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