Grand Street Bridge is a through-truss swing bridge over Newtown Creek in New York City. The current crossing was completed in 1902, and links Grand Street and Grand Avenue via a two-lane, height-restricted roadway. It is a main connection between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, carrying an average of 10,200 vehicles per day ().
History
According to the New York City Department of Transportation, three distinct swing bridges have spanned Newtown Creek at the location between Grand St. and Grand Avenue. Up until the mid-20th century, the crossing also carried horse-drawn (and later, electrified) streetcars of the Grand Street and Newtown Railroad, which was later leased by Brooklyn City Railroad and eventually became the Brooklyn and Queens Transit Corporation.
Original bridge (1875) One of the earliest references to a permanent crossing is found in an 1864 article from The Brooklyn Daily Times, reporting on the local Board of Aldermen's provision of for the construction of a moveable bridge. Based on sparse details, the first structure apparently featured a deck made of wooden planks and a single-track railroad. It opened in 1875.
Throughout the bridge's life, it was often found to be in a poor state of upkeep, and local newspapers repeatedly wrote of its dangerous condition:
By 1889 the bridge was so deteriorated that on July 14, half of it "fell with a crash into the creek." A year later, residents appeared to be questioning even the basic viability of bridges over Newtown Creek, with one Supervisor of Jamaica, Queens suggesting that the quadruple of Newtown's bridges be replaced with tunnels modeled after contemporary examples in Chicago. An editorial highlighted the claim that the initial cost of a "decently designed" drawbridge was no less than that of a tunnel, but a bridge would incur significantly higher maintenance, operation, and tending costs throughout its lifetime.
Second bridge (1890) In the fall of 1888, the Bridge Committee of the Supervisors of Kings and Queens Counties announced the exploration of replacement options for the original bridge. After a request for proposal process which specified an iron bridge with either a stone or wooden substructure, a construction contract was awarded in July of the following year. The winner, Charles A. Cregin (employing a Dean & Westbrook design), was a native New Yorker who estimated a replacement cost of .
Construction began in the summer of 1889, with expectations of the crossing being closed to road and rail traffic for nearly five months. The project's completion was formally accepted by county Supervisors on July 30, 1890 at a final cost of around , including the bridge's rebuilt approaches. Shortly after construction, an additional was approved (controversially) to add a bridge-keeper's shelter. On March 24, 1984, the bridge was electrified to enable trolley service. Installed some time later, electrical machinery which could open and close the span in around "half a minute" was far more advanced than most of Brooklyn's other man-operated moveable bridges.
While the new span was an improvement on its predecessor, the warm welcome would be short-lived. A significant controversy developed just eight years after its opening when local businessmen, represented by Congressman Charles G. Bennett, secured federal funding for dredging Newtown Creek to the tune of . While the new channel depth of was a boon to shipping interests, it also required reinforcement of the bridge foundation. This had the side-effect of narrowing each draw opening by and further-complicating the channel's geometry, making it unusable by vessels longer than LOA (i.e.– most of the freight vessels in operation on the creek at the time).
After receiving complaints from the area's maritime operators, the United States Department of War became involved in the dispute. The agency, which would soon gain federal authority over all domestic waterway navigability with Congress' passage of the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899, notified the City of its position in a letter:
Citing a lack of funding for a replacement, the city's Department of Bridges desired to keep the crossing in place. At a hearing before the United States Army Corps of Engineers on January 17, 1889, Bridge Commissioner John L. Shea argued that his department had received no formal complaints, and that the existing structure was better than no bridge at all. According to the department's Chief Engineer, "at any rate, they can only condemn the bridge. They cannot make us build another."