In the 1880s, the Pennsylvania Railroad wanted a direct link to New York, possibly via a tunnel beneath the Hudson River. But they feared that smoke and fumes from steam locomotives would asphyxiate passengers underground. They decided to build a bridge instead.
The job was assigned to Gustav Lindenthal, a bridge engineer born in Austria-Hungary who had designed the Smithfield Street Bridge in Pittsburgh. By 1888, Lindenthal had completed blueprints for the North River Bridge – a huge suspension bridge, bigger than any ever built before. It would link 12th Street in Hoboken to 23rd Street in Manhattan in one 3,100-foot leap, and carry trains on 10 tracks. The crossing would take trains to a new station at Sixth Avenue and 23rd Street.
Big costs, little progress
Lindenthal’s great bridge would cost $15 million to construct, plus another $25 million for buying rights-of-way and building the station, a total of $40 million. This was as much as it cost to run New York City in 1888.
Before construction could begin, Lindenthal’s bridge plans had to have the approval of Congress. In 1890, Congress approved the proposal, and the North River Bridge Company was incorporated to begin building Lindenthal’s bridge. Around 1892, the North River Bridge Company began to condemn property in Hoboken for the bridge.
But a financial panic in 1893 bankrupted some of the railroads that were going to pay for the new span, delaying construction until 1895.
Ground was broken in Hoboken on June 18, 1895, and the cornerstone of the bridge’s anchorage was placed at 12th and Garden streets in a small ceremony 10 days later.
A rival proposal
The activity in Hoboken stirred the rival New York and New Jersey Bridge Company to propose another bridge, this one across the Hudson to West 59th Street in Manhattan. The plan included a gigantic passenger station on Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th streets, connected to the bridge at the West Side of Manhattan.
The idea was approved by the federal government in 1896 and it looked like there would be two new bridges across the Hudson, but investors in the New York and New Jersey Bridge Company quarreled and nothing was done, allowing their charter to lapse.
Not over – under
Work on the Hoboken bridge began on and off, but before the project got very far, construction of the Hudson and Manhattan “tubes” (now the PATH tunnels) was under way. With the development of electric trains, a tunnel under the river became safe and practical, so the Pennsylvania Railroad abandoned the idea of a trans-Hudson bridge.
In 1903, the company began building train tunnels beneath Weehawken to what is now Penn Station. This project was completed in 1910.
Lindenthal went on to design the Queensboro and Hell Gate bridges as well as other never-built Hudson River spans, including one between Weehawken and Manhattan.
He lived long enough to attend the dedication of the George Washington Bridge in 1931 before dying in 1935. All that is left of Lindenthal’s dream is a cornerstone and the illustration of an enormous bridge straddling uptown Hoboken.
Editor’s note: A full version of this column was originally printed in Hoboken History Issue No. 4, published by the Hoboken Historical Museum. Please visit the museum at 1301 Hudson St. for more information. To read past columns from this year-long series, visit www.hobokenreporter.com.