Program

Historic Transportation

Subject

Site, Transportation

Location

Tramway Plaza West, New York, NY 10044, USA

Lat/Long

40.757602, -73.954642

Grant Recipient

Roosevelt Island Historical Society

Completed in 1909 after eight years of construction, the Queensboro Bridge marked a significant achievement in the history of transportation in New York City. Consisting of five steel spans extending 3,725 feet across the East River, passing over Roosevelt Island, the cantilever bridge connected the borough of Queens with Manhattan. At each end of the bridge, long approaches were constructed of steel and masonry. The Manhattan approach, extending parallel with 59^th Street, measures 1,051 feet, and the Queens approach measures 3,455 feet, bringing the total measurement of the bridge to 8,231 feet. The bridge consists of four cantilever sections and four supporting towers. When constructed, each of the towers on Roosevelt Island were equipped with an elevator to provide access to the island.

Queensboro Bridge opened to vehicle and pedestrian traffic in March 1909. The bridge provided two levels for traffic to cross, the lower level consisting of a roadway between two trolley tracks running along the exterior of the bridge. By November 1909, trolley service had been established on the lower level of the bridge. The upper level eventual consisted of four elevated train tracks operating the Second Avenue “El,” or Second Avenue Elevated railway by 1917. On the Queens side of the bridge, tracks split into multiple branches. At the Manhattan end of the bridge at Second Avenue and 59^th Street, there were five trolley entrances made of cast iron and a glazed terra cotta panel exterior and glass tile interior, which covered stairs leading to an underground trolley terminal.

According to a 1920 report published by the Chamber of Commerce of the Borough of Queens, around 1,700 trolley cars passed over the bridge daily in 1910. By 1915, that number had increased to over 3,200 trolley cars a day (Queens Borough New York City, 1910-1920, Chamber of Commerce of the Borough of Queens, 1920, 40).

When trolley service across the bridge ceased in 1957, the cast iron and terra cotta trolley entrances fell into disuse and two were demolished. One that was saved was repurposed as the entrance to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum in 1970. When the museum underwent renovation, the Roosevelt Island Historical Society obtained the former trolley entrance, relocating it to Roosevelt Island and restoring it as a visitor center in 2007. It remains as a vestige of the Queensboro Bridge trolley service, a piece of transportation history that once served tens of thousands of New Yorkers every day.