July 05, 2006
Triborough Bridge exhibit opens at Transit Museum
The Transit Museum's newest exhibition, "The Triborough Bridge: Robert Moses and the Automobile Age," may not be for everyone.
 This is made for that certain breed who gets hot looking at monolithic, historic, powerful - yet arcane - infrastructure.The sort who fetish over blueprints, sketches, (good heavens, originals,) and still today are passionate over what Robert Moses did for, or to, New York.
This is a show for people who will tremble slightly before the central panel for the Harlem River Lift Span (1936-2000,) as they realize, dear god, there's no "do not touch" sign in sight. They'll vie with the small children in order to lay their grown-up hands on the actual "lower/raise" controls and wryly smile at the handwritten note on a yellowed piece of masking tape that reads "does not light/aulty wiring."
 They'll wonder if there's a way to remove the plexiglass preventing them from laying hands on a section of the bridge's original section wire. They'll invoke jane Jacobs' name and cluck over the pctures of the hosiery repair shop (at 915 Hunts Point Avenue,) that was razed to make way for "progress."
And they'll linger over a plaque, perhaps wondering the precise name of the modernist-type font, that named the Triborough "the most beautiful steel bridge" of 1936.
But if you're not one of those people, you may still appreciate the fact that the bridge, which links Manhattan to Queens and the Bronx, was the first in the city built for cars. The earlier ones all had horse-drawn vehicles or rail cars in mind:
Brooklyn Bridge - 1883
Williamsburg Bridge - 1903
Manhattan Bridge - 19009
Queensboro Bridge - 1909
Triborough Bridge - 1936
The groundbreaking for the Triborough was October 25, 1929, which the exhibit points was the day after the stock market crashed.
 The exhibition, which celebrates the 70th anniversary of the bridge, will run through April 2008. It's at the main location of the Transit Museum, located in Brooklyn at the corner of Boerum Place and Schermerhorn Street, map.
This Saturday, July 8, the museum is celebrating its own 30th birthday, and whacking the admission fee to 1976 rates for the day: 50 cents for adults and a quarter for children.
Top picture credit: O. Winston Link. The Triborough Bridge Suspension Span.
Photograph, 1967 Courtesy MTA Bridges and Tunnels Special Archive.
July 5, 2006 01:48 PM in Architecture, History, Kids, Museums, Out of Manhattan, Sightsology, Transportology
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