I've been meaning to post about the excellent and informative tour of the Gowanus neighborhood, led by urban planner and Gowanus Dredgers co-founder Owen Foote, that I joined earlier in March, but haven't had much time. I thought I would get a little bit of a start tonight with a few photos of the Carroll Street Bridge. I found this to be really interesting, I'm always kind of intrigued by machinery where you can actually see things working (I got such a kick out of the locking-through process on both my solo trip down the Hudson and the Erie Canal trip TQ and I took a couple of years back, and friends who've been reading this for a long time may remember me geeking out over actually getting to see a tugboat's rudder quadrant in action in Rudder Post).
The bridges on the Gowanus are all built to open so that boats can pass through. This one is not your usual drawbridge, though - this one, the entire bridge is mounted on rails. A stout cable is attached to the bridge, passing around a set of pulleys and into the structure that houses the machinery. When activated, the cables drag the entire bridge down the tracks into this clear space on the shore, then back into place once the boat's gone through. I'd never seen a bridge like this before, and it turns out that this one's one of only four left in the country (that detail courtesy of Forgotten NY, which also shares a funny movie clip featuring the bridge in action). It would be fun to see it happen, and it seems that schoolkids in the area sometimes actually get to go for a ride!
The bridges on the Gowanus are all built to open so that boats can pass through. This one is not your usual drawbridge, though - this one, the entire bridge is mounted on rails. A stout cable is attached to the bridge, passing around a set of pulleys and into the structure that houses the machinery. When activated, the cables drag the entire bridge down the tracks into this clear space on the shore, then back into place once the boat's gone through. I'd never seen a bridge like this before, and it turns out that this one's one of only four left in the country (that detail courtesy of Forgotten NY, which also shares a funny movie clip featuring the bridge in action). It would be fun to see it happen, and it seems that schoolkids in the area sometimes actually get to go for a ride!
5 comments:
Cool bit of engineering - when was it built?
1889! Here's a blog that has a lot more detail:
www.bridgesnyc.com
I may have to find some time to look at more of our local bridges over there, that's a pretty interesting-looking blog.
Forgotten New York! I just read parts of one of their posts that talks about one of the streets in the neigborhood in the Bronx where I grew up. No drawbridges, but this brought me back, in a way, to childhood times.
So cool. New York is endlessly fascinating. Thanks for sharing your adventures.
I love the nautical stuff and funky old machinery.
Post a Comment