By Richard Magat

Jul. 1, 2015:  As a prime destination, Manhattan has long been crisscrossed by bridges from the "mainland" (the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and New Jersey).

Commuters from Bronxville and elsewhere in Westchester are hardly conscious of barreling across railroad bridges to arrive at Grand Central Terminal. But those crossings are new relative to hundreds of other links.

The oldest, the High Bridge, between Manhattan and the Bronx, has just been reopened after a half century of disuse. The 1,450-foot-long structure, first completed in 1848, carried water through large pipes from the Croton Aqueduct system, bringing fresh water to a booming young city.

The High Bridge reopening, which cost $62 million, was attended by a marching band and florid tributes. Manhattan's borough president, Gale A. Brewer, declared, "This is almost the eighth wonder of the world. There are really no words to describe it. The opening of the High Bridge means that Manhattan will be connected to the continental United States by its one and only pedestrian bridge." 

If this writer may be permitted a personal footnote, he points nostalgically to a barely noticeable crossing of the Harlem River at Fordham Road in the Bronx and 207th Street in Manhattan. It replaced an 1895 bridge that was floated downstream over the Harlem River.

It was across this short span many decades ago that he, a Bronx lad, travelled to court with his future wife, a Manhattan dweller. It was an exhausting journey by bus and trolley car, but, to put it mildly, enormously worthwhile.

The first bridge connecting to Manhattan, a primitive structure that no longer exists, spanned Spuyten Duyvil Creek ("spouting devil").

Today's majestic crossings are variously named for geographic proximity, e.g., Throggs Neck, or for historic figures, such as Henry Hudson, Alexander Hamilton, George Goethals, and Verrazano, or for Revolutionary War heroes, such as Washington, Kosciuszko, and Pulaski, or for those in memoriam, such as Robert F. Kennedy.

Whether political clubhouses get into the act, such as Ed Koch's piggybacking on the clunky Queensboro Bridge, remains to be seen.

Photo by N. Bower