The George Washington Bridge in New York, first known as the Hudson River Bridge, is an impressive bridge to see in pictures or person. Suspension bridges, such as the GW is, have the longest spans of any type of bridge ever built. A “span” of the bridge refers to the distance between two points of ground support for the bridge. In the George’s case, the two points of ground support are the two towers on either side if its main span. At the time of its opening for traffic the GW had the longest main span (from tower to tower) in the world, nearly doubling the next longest main span in the world. The earlier record had been 1850 ft. before the GWB’s 3500 ft. set the new record and held it from 1931 to 1937.
The GW bridge was renamed in honor of the first President of the United States, as most would readily recognize. The, now, double-decked bridge was built starting in October 1927 and opened to traffic in October 1931. When it initially opened the bridge had six lanes of traffic on a single deck. Two more lanes were added in 1946, bringing the total lanes of traffic to eight. Then in 1962 a second lower deck was added to the bridge consisting of six lanes of traffic. The additional lower deck made the George Washington Bridge the only 14-lane suspension bridge in the world. Many persons using the bridge affectionately and humorously refer to the lower deck as “Martha,” the first President’s wife.
Swiss born architect and engineer Othmar Ammann’s bridge design proposal in 1923 ultimately won out over all of the other entries for the bridge’s construction. Ammann became the Port of New York Authority’s (now the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey) new chief engineer, and construction started on the two 570 ft. towers, which eventually topped out at just over 600 ft. of above water height, and which would hold the suspension cables aiding in the support of the 4760 ft long bridge between its anchorages on either side. To put that distance in length into a perspective many Americans and others can relate to, if you were to put 13 and 1/4 professional American football fields, including end zones, end-to-end to each other you’d just about have the total linear length from anchorage to anchorage of the George Washington Bridge.
Other bridge dimensions and stated facts according to the Port Authority include a bridge width of 119 ft. (this includes the North and South sidewalks where pedestrians and bicyclists cross the bridge), a roadway width of 90 ft., a mid-span above water height of 212 ft., initial cost of bridge construction of about 59 million dollars, a Port Authority investment into the bridge as of Dec. 2007 of 1,123,925,000 or 1 billion, one hundred twenty-three million, nine hundred twenty-five thousand dollars, a total traffic volume in 2007 of 107,912,000 vehicles, making it the world’s busiest traveled bridge.
http://www.panynj.gov/commutingtravel/bridges/html/gwb.html
http://www.panynj.gov/Commutingtravel/bridges/html/historical.html
