| Poughkeepsie Bridge | |
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| Official name | Poughkeepsie Bridge |
| Carries | Poughkeepsie Bridge Company (railroad), and many successors including Central New England Railway, New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad and Penn Central. Out of service for railroad use since May 8, 1974 |
| Crosses | Hudson River |
| Locale | Poughkeepsie, New York to Highland, New York |
| Design | Span lengths= 2 × 525 ft (161.53 m); 2 × 548 feet (168.62 m); 1 × 546 feet (168 meters); 2 × 201 feet (61.85 m): total length of river spans between anchorages= 3,094 feet (952 meters); total bridge length=6,768 feet (2082.15 m), including eastern approach viaduct of 2,641 feet (812.31 meters) and western approach viaduct of 1,033 feet (317.85 meters) |
| Width | Single standard gauge (4 ft 8.5 in) track (originally double-tracked until heavier 2-10-2 steam locomotives required a centered gantlet track in 1917-18; single-tracked in 1959; track unused since May 8, 1974 and now removed) |
| Vertical clearance | Deck truss, unlimited clearance |
| Clearance below | 212 ft (65.23 m) above river |
| Opened | As railroad bridge: January 1, 1889 As pedestrian and bicycle bridge: October 3, 2009 |
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Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge
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| Location: | Poughkeepsie, New York |
| Built: | 1886–1888 |
| Architect: | O'Rourke,John F.; Union Bridge Co. |
| Governing body: | State of New York: Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (owner New York State Bridge Authority has been responsible for maintenance since taking title on December 21, 2010) |
| NRHP Reference#: | 79001577 |
| Added to NRHP: | February 23, 1979 (original) May 20, 2008 (additional documentation)[1][2] |
The Poughkeepsie Bridge (sometimes known as the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge, the Poughkeepsie-Highland Railroad Bridge, the High Bridge, or, since October 3, 2009, the Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park) is a steel cantilever bridge spanning the Hudson River between Poughkeepsie, New York on the east bank and Highland, New York on the west bank. Built as a double track railroad bridge, it was completed on January 1, 1889, and went out of service on May 8, 1974. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, updated in 2008.[1][2] It was opened to the public on October 3, 2009, as a pedestrian and cyclist bridge and New York State Park.
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Planning for a Hudson crossing bridge began before the Civil War. On October 27, 1855, an engineer proposed that a railroad bridge be built across the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie, via a letter published in the Poughkeepsie Eagle newspaper. The proposal seemed so absurd that the Eagle ridiculed it, and it was effectively forgotten until 1868.[3] Over the years, many plans had been made for a fixed span across the Hudson River south of Albany to replace numerous car float and ferry operations. One of the most persistent was originally chartered in 1868 as the Hudson Highland Suspension Bridge Company, and would have crossed from Anthony's Nose to Fort Clinton, now roughly the site of the Bear Mountain Bridge. This proposed bridge was never built.
The Poughkeepsie Bridge Company was chartered in June 1871 to build the bridge, and J. Edgar Thomson of the Pennsylvania Railroad was persuaded to support the effort. Contracts were let to a firm called the American Bridge Company (not the company of the same name founded later), but the Panic of 1873 intervened and the scheme collapsed.
In 1886, the Manhattan Bridge Building Company was organized to finance the construction. Among the prominent backers was Henry Clay Frick, the coal tycoon and associate of Andrew Carnegie. The Union Bridge Company of Athens, Pennsylvania, which had completed the Michigan Central cantilever bridge at Niagara (see Niagara Cantilever Bridge), was subcontracted to build the Poughkeepsie Bridge. Dawson, Symmes and Usher were the foundation engineers, while John F. O'Rourke, P. P. Dickinson and Arthur B. Paine were the structural engineers. The bridge was designed by Charles Macdonald and Arthur B. Paine. As is typical for cantilever bridges, construction was carried out by constructing cribwork, masonry piers, towers, fixed truss sections on falsework, and finally cantilever sections, with the final cantilever interconnection (suspended) spans floated out or raised with falsework.
The first (test) train crossed the bridge on December 29, 1888.
The bridge was considered an engineering marvel of the day and has seven main spans. The total length is 6,768 feet (2082.15 meters), including approaches, and the deck is 212 feet (65.23 meters) above water. It is a multispan cantilever truss bridge, having two river-crossing cantilever spans of 548 feet each (168.62 meters), one center span of 546 feet (168 meters), two anchor (connecting) spans of 525 feet each (161.53 meters), two shore spans of 201 feet each (61.85 meters), a 2,641-foot (812.31 meters) approach viaduct on the eastern bank and a 1,033-foot (317.85 meters) approach viaduct on the western bank. All seven spans were built of newly available Bessemer Process "mild" (between 0.16% and 0.29% carbon) steel, while the two approach viaducts were built of iron. It formed part of the most direct rail route between the industrial northeastern states and the midwestern and western states.[4]
The bridge remained as the only Hudson River crossing south of Albany until the construction of the Bear Mountain (road) Bridge in 1924, and was advertised as a way to avoid New York City car floats and railroad passenger ferries. Due to the changes in ownership of railroads, the bridge was nominally owned by many different lines, including Central New England Railway (CNE), New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad (NH), Penn Central (PC) and Conrail, among others.
The bridge was strengthened in 1912 by Ralph Modjeski, of famed bridge civil engineering firm Modjeski and Masters, by adding a third line of trusses down the middle and by adding a central girder and additional interleaved columns, to safely handle the increased weight of freight trains crossing it, as can be seen in this illustration from the Poughkeepsie Journal story archive. In 1917-18, the double tracks on the bridge were converted to gantlet track operation to center the weight of new, far-heavier New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad 2-10-2 steam locomotives. The gantlet tracks were replaced by a centered single track in 1959.
During World War II, the bridge was a vital link for war freight traffic, and was guarded by U.S. Army soldiers 24 hours a day.
The bridge's importance was severely reduced in 1960 when the Erie Lackawanna system was created; the larger railroad consolidated most freight routes on its own trackage. When the Penn Central System was created by merger in 1968, it also preferred a different route, using its Selkirk Yard and West Shore Line to New Jersey and its Boston & Albany line to New England. Factors such as the decrease in manufacturing in the Northeast, the construction of the Interstate Highway System, and increased maintenance costs may also have made the bridge increasingly uneconomical in the 1960s and 1970s. With the 1970 bankruptcy of Penn Central, the Lehigh & Hudson River Railway, which fed vital through traffic to the "Maybrook Line" at Maybrook Yard, New York, similarly entered receivership. On May 8, 1974, the Poughkeepsie Bridge suffered a wooden-tie fire that damaged about 700 feet of the bridge decking and underlying girders: reported shortly after an eastbound freight train had crossed, with the fire confined to the eastern viaduct over the City of Poughkeepsie. Penn Central had totally neglected the bridge's fire-protection system, which had no water on the day of the fire, while firing watchmen who had previously kept watch for such fires.[3]
In 1976, after two years of abandonment, Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D.-Conn.) forced Conrail to acquire the former NH Railroad Maybrook Line from Maybrook Yard to New Haven, Connecticut including the Poughkeepsie Bridge, by including it in the United States Railway Association "Final System Plan" for reorganization of the seven bankrupt Northeastern railroads into Conrail. However, Conrail then refused to spend anything to repair the 1974 fire damage. Seven years then passed, with one important event that was financially negative to Conrail: pieces of the bridge's eastern approach viaduct over the City of Poughkeepsie, where the 1974 fire damage had occurred, had been falling onto US Route 9 from time to time and damaging passing vehicles. In response, the city successfully sued Conrail and forced it to spend $300,000 of its own money in 1981 to remove the entire decking over the superstructure (ties, rails, spikes and tie plates, iron railings and fences, and so forth) from the east bank of the Hudson to the beginning of the eastern approach viaduct. Subsequent to this event, Conrail sought to dispose of the unused bridge. Conrail also removed the single track and passing sidings of its Maybrook Line, between Hopewell Junction and Maybrook, in 1983.[5]
In late 1983, Conrail had already quietly solicited competitive bids for imminent bridge demolition when a railroad bridge enthusiast and lawyer, Donald L. Pevsner, enquired about buying it for responsible adaptive re-use.[6] In response, Conrail, realizing that it could save between $7–25 million by selling the bridge for a nominal sum rather than paying for its demolition, terminated its call for demolition bids and instead gave Pevsner three successive three-month options to find a responsible new private or public owner.[6][7] These options began on February 1, 1984 and ended on November 1, 1984. Though the original option agreement called for a financially responsible new owner, that could and would pay for necessary liability insurance and maintenance on the bridge into the long-term future, then-Conrail Chairman and CEO L. Stanley Crane did an abrupt about-face in the late summer of 1984. He told his Senior Vice President-Real Estate, Lawrence J. Huff, to advise Pevsner that "the bridge would be sold to the first warm body on November 2, 1984, should Pevsner not exercise his third and last option by November 1, 1984," and that "another buyer was waiting in the wings to do just that." When Pevsner asked Huff whether he was expected to take title in a shell corporation, with zero assets but the bridge and no funds to pay for necessary insurance and maintenance, the answer was, "If necessary. We just want to get it off the books." Huff then personally apologized to Pevsner for maintaining such an irresponsible corporate posture at the express direction of his Chairman and CEO: particularly as Conrail was completely owned by the Federal government at the time. (Crane retired from Conrail in late 1988, and died in Florida on July 15, 2003 at age 87.) Pevsner refused to exercise his option under such conditions, and allowed it to lapse on November 1, 1984.[3]
On November 2, 1984, after 10½ years of abandonment and as threatened to Pevsner, Conrail sold the bridge for $1 to a convicted-felon bank swindler named Gordon Schreiber Miller, of St. Davids, Pennsylvania, to "get it off the books." For the next fourteen years, Miller and his successor, Vito Moreno, spent little or nothing on maintenance or insurance, while attempting to drastically increase the $25,000 annual rent paid by Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corporation for its three 115,000-volt and three 69,000-volt power lines across the Hudson, attached to the south side of the bridge since 1949.[8] In response, Central Hudson de-energized those power lines and relocated them under the river in 1985, thereby ending Miller's only source of bridge income.[5] During this long period, critical bridge navigation lights were mostly inoperative, resulting in large U.S. Coast Guard fines against the Miller corporation that all went unpaid. Further, all of the 2,200-pound brackets that connected Central Hudson's de-energized high-tension power lines to the south side of the bridge continued to deteriorate by rusting. Though Central Hudson admitted that it normally had a legal duty to remove its abandoned power lines, it refused to remove its abandoned bridge-affixed lines, instead relying on a claim that it no longer owned the lines at issue pursuant to prior litigation with Conrail that was decided on September 26, 1984,[9] and won a similar legal opinion before the New York State Public Service Commission in 1995, which was left to stand on April 1, 1999 when The Poughkeepsie-Highland Railroad Bridge Company, Inc., as the successor owner to Gordon Schreiber Miller and Vito Moreno, withdrew its 1998 complaint against Central Hudson on January 27, 1999.[10]
On June 4, 1998, following the long nonpayment of Dutchess and Ulster County taxes on the bridge by prior owners Gordon Schreiber Miller and his successor, Vito Moreno, Moreno deeded the bridge to a nonprofit volunteer organization called Walkway Over the Hudson, which took title through its nonprofit New York corporation, The Poughkeepsie-Highland Railroad Bridge Company, Inc., hoping to turn it into a pedestrian and cyclist walkway. The deed was recorded in both Counties on June 5, 1998. The former Central Hudson power lines were finally removed in 2009, as part of Walkway construction. On December 21, 2010, the Walkway corporation conveyed the entire structure (6,768 feet long) to the New York State Bridge Authority. For the first time since November 2, 1984, liability insurance again exists on the entire structure, together with the "deep pockets" required for proper maintenance.[11] On September 5, 2009, conversion work and repairs to the structural steel and the laying of concrete slabs for the walkway were completed. The volunteer head of "Walkway", as it is known locally, said in 2008, "We think people will come from all over. It's the equivalent of the Eiffel Tower, or the Golden Gate Bridge."[12] The project initially received support from local residents, city and state officials totaling about $1,000,000, plus forgiveness of $550,000 in taxes inherited from the previous owners.[13][14] Then, Walkway solicited funding from both the State and Federal governments, for historic preservation, and from private philanthropic organizations.[15] Funding sources as of October 23, 2009 include:[16]
The total budget as of October, 2009 totals about $38.8 million. The Walkway Group has raised a total of $30.7 million as of October 23, 2009, and continues its efforts to raise the approximately $8.1 million shortfall from a number of government and philanthropic sources. The deficit was financed by lines of credit from Ulster Savings Bank ($4 million) and M&T Bank (the balance) that were drawn-upon to complete the project.[17] These lines of credit were scheduled to be converted into five-year loans at the end of 2009. Their present status (July 22, 2010) and outstanding balances owed have not been disclosed by the Walkway organization nor by these two banks.[18]
The project was separated into four phases, with the first two completed as of October, 2009:[19]
The piers were inspected in 2008 and given a clean bill of health. Similarly, Bergmann Associates, P.C. (of Rochester and Albany, NY), project engineers and managers, has stated in writing that the wind loads were carefully examined for the replacement, solid-concrete Walkway decking, and that this item is not a safety problem.[20] The decking work was completed on September 5, 2009. Walkway opened the bridge to the public on October 3, 2009, in time for the quadricentennial celebration of Henry Hudson sailing up the Hudson River, and that day handed it over to the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation for management.
The bridge became a National Recreation Trail in 2009.[21]
The opening ceremony of the Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park, on October 3, 2009, featured music by Pete Seeger, and was attended by Governor David Paterson, Senator Chuck Schumer, Congressman Maurice Hinchey, President of nearby Vassar College Catharine Bond Hill,[22] and other officials. Paterson said, "This bridge is now the longest footbridge in the world."[23]
Reports by the end of 2009 were that the number of visitors to the walkway were much greater than expected, reaching approximately 415,000 as of December 29. Projections prior to the opening were of 267,000 visits per year, and are now 750,000 visits per year.[24]
The first footrace on the walkway occurred the day after the official opening on October 4, 2009. The 5k race started on the Highland side, crossed to the Poughkeepsie side and turned around at the parking lot and finished back in Highland. The race was won by James Boeding in a time of 16:26. The female winner was Kira DeCaprio in 20:12. There were 660 recorded finishers of the race.[25]
On May 15, 2010, there was a lighting ceremony as LED-based lights were turned on for the first time, designed to allow nighttime use of the bridge, though due to funding limitations this is expected to only be used on special occasions. 3000 people paid $5 apiece to attend the sold-out ceremony.[26] Crowd management presented a problem, prompting criticism and an apology from the Walkway organization, but ultimately no incident or injury.[27]
On February 20, 2011, Don Kampfer, a Korean War veteran, died of a heart attack he suffered while participating in a monthly ceremony to retire and replace the American flag on the Walkway. Kampfer is the second person to die on the Walkway, the other also being of a heart attack while walking over the bridge.[28]
On July 27, 2011, an Ulster County man in his late 20s is reported to have jumped off the bridge in the evening after it closed. His entry to the bridge set off an alarm bringing the police, who found his belongings (and later a suicide note at his home), but he was not there; his body was found two days later.[29][30]
The Bridge Walkway is currently operating as part of the New York State Historic Park System, open from 7:00 a.m. to dusk. Limited parking is available on either end of the bridge.
Restrooms are currently located at the ends of the Walkway, although at the time of a 2008 engineering survey of the bridge, there was "not a johnny on the spot".[31] Pets are permitted, but owners should bring equipment to clean up. Bicycles are permitted, and the Walkway is flat and relatively wheelchair friendly.
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