A disappointed bridge between Harlem and Queens?
One hundred years ago today … New York papers reported about a proposal for a bridge between 125th Street Harlem and Astoria, Queens.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Feb 8, 1920. p. 58. Library of Congress.
The neighborhood on the Harlem side looked like this in 1920.
1st Avenue between 126th and 127th Streets. Above: August 2, 1920. Below: October 24, 1920.
The plan, proposed by 29th District (Harlem) Assemblyman Louis A. Cuvillier, was was an early stirring of what eventually turned into the more ambitiously conceived Triborough Bridge (now named the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge), which was finally built under the direction of Robert Moses in 1936, and in fact, became a symbol of Moses’s disastrous authoritarian hold over NYC transit. (See Caro, The Power Broker, p. 625-731 passim.) At the time, city planners were under the delusion that building more motorways would lessen traffic problems, when in fact the reverse is true.
Still, one cannot fault the Harlem Board of Trade for thinking that an automobile connection between Harlem, and Queens, crossing Randall’s and Wards’ Islands, would be good for business. As was reported in the New York Tribune:
New York Tribune, Feb 8, 1920, p. 31. Library of Congress.