On today’s date, August 13, 1959: Construction of New York City’s Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge began. The bridge opened in 1964. It has 13 lanes on its two decks.
The ground-breaking on August 13th marked the signature achievement of master builder Robert Moses’s sprawling urban transportation infrastructure empire. To build the colossal suspension bridge—which would stand as the longest in the world upon its completion—engineers had to account for the actual curvature of the Earth over the massive, nearly mile-long span between the historic shores of Brooklyn and Staten Island, designing towers that stood several inches further apart at the top than at their bases. The bridge’s multi-decked, 13-lane configuration completely transformed the economic geography of the region, bypassing Manhattan to create a seamless, high-speed arterial corridor that permanently opened Staten Island up to massive post-war suburban development.
Image of a five-cent stamp of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge that was issued in 1964 via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
