Gothamist: Happy 70th Birthday, Triborough Bridge

jmchez

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 16:49:08 -0500

Oh, I am so sorry! I just kept refreshing and, seeing nothing posted again. My apologies.

jmchez

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 16:28:37 -0500

Oh and I forgot to add that Othmar Ammann was the assitant engineer on the Hell Gate railroad bridge (the arch bridge shown in the picture above). He was also a consulting engineer on the Golden Gate bridge in San Franciso. Amman had a design for the GWB that was rejected but was very close to what the Golden Gate ended up as a few years later.

jmchez

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 16:20:14 -0500

As usual, the real designer and builder doesn't get mention. Othmar Ammann designed and built, not only the Triboro but also, the George Washington, the Throgs Neck, the Whitestone, the Verrazano Narrows, and the Bayone. In a documentary about Ammann, the filmakers noted how, at the opening ceremnoy of the Verrazanno Narrows Bridge, Robert Moses talked about "the great engineer" without ever mentioning his name. Donald Trump is also shown on the film talking about how he attended the ceremony with his father and the snub given to Ammann convinced him to always display his name on anything he built. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Othmar_Ammann

jmchez

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 16:08:18 -0500

As always, the guy who actually designed and built the bridge gets no mention. Othmar Ammann designed, the Triboro, the George Washington, the Throgs Neck, The Whitestone, the Verrazano Narrows and the Outer Crossing. He was also the assistant engineer for the Hell Gate bridge (the arch bridge shown in the photograph above). In a documentary on Ammann's work, the filmmakers pointed out how at the opening ceremony of the Verrazano Narrows, Robert Moses spoke of the great engineer without ever mentioning him by mane. In that same film Donald Trump is shown saying how he attended that ceremony with his father and the snub given to Ammann convinced him to always display his own name on all of his buildings and properties.

jmchez

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 16:04:26 -0500

Eric

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 15:23:21 -0500

Robert Moses controlled the pursestrings for pretty much all transportation policy in the city for a good 40 years. He's pretty much the reason why we're still using an early-20th Century subway in the 21st. If it weren't for Moses and his single-minded pursuit of more highways, we'd have the Second Avenue subway, additional lines in eastern and northern Queens, and we'd have avoided the worst of the delayed-maintenance policy of the '70s and '80s. Thanks, Robert Moses.

Eric

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:58:02 -0500

MT

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 10:57:11 -0500

I think we can all agree that there was a lot of good as well as bad that came out of Moses' vision. There was a lot of discussion about how he was passionate about traffic and "the flow." I think what it ultimately boiled down to is that Robert Moses provided the infrastructure to save New York from strangling itself but in the end he forgot that New York was the destination - it wasn't just something to be passed through on the road to somewhere else. I think it was a fact he just never comprehended. While it's obviously a bad idea to concentrate that much power in one man, in today's world of design by committee (hello Ground Zero) maybe giving yourself over to a visionary isn't such a bad thing as long as their is an empowered representative of the people to keep them in check. Back in the day we had LaGuardia. Who knows? Maybe Bloomberg could be the new LaGuardia.

Toby

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 10:44:21 -0500

Caro's The Power Broker is an excelent book that just takes forever to read. As for Robert Moses, I am convinced that he is responsible for the anarchy in the Bronx in the 1970s and 1980s. Can you say Cross-Bronx Expressway? Sure he did good, but he also did a lot of evil.

cdjames

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 10:37:31 -0500

Bob Moses: "Critics never built anything" After a year and a half I'm only half way through Caro's 1400 page all-encompassing account of Moses life. It's that dense. Though the bio certainly reflects a bias against Moses - justified, and supported by most of NYers - it is amazing that ONE PERSON could have so much influence over the 'finger-print' of the world's greatest city. True Fact: Despite building the majority of NYC's metro roadways, bridges and tunnels Robert Moses never learned how to drive a car!!!

MT

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 10:03:26 -0500

One of my favorite quotes about Triborough is in the NY documentary when (I think it's Robert A.M. Stern. Maybe someone can help me out with that. ) they say how the land masses that converge at NYC rush together but are ultimately separated by water and Triborough stitched back together what nature tore apart. It's a pretty powerful testimony to man reshaping his environment which NYC is perhaps the ultimate example. NYC and Triborough truly are monuments to man's achievement.