WHERE: The Williamsburg Bridge
START: Delancey Street - Essex Street subway station (F, J, M trains) and M14A SBS bus
FINISH: Marcy Avenue subway station (J, M trains), fully accessible, and B24, B44, B44 SBS, B46, B46 SBS, B62, Q58, Q59 buses
DISTANCE: 1.8 miles (2.9 kilometers)
Photographs by Michael Cairl. Videos courtesy the Library of Congress. Map courtesy footpathmap.com.
Route of this walk, reading from left to right.
The Williamsburg Bridge is the last of the East River bridges that I’ve walked. I’ve biked over the bridge a few times and crossed by car and by subway, but this was the first time I had crossed it on foot. It is arguably the ugly duckling of the East River bridges, but it has a fascinating history and is oddly appealing.
This walk started at the intersection of Delancey Street and Essex Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The subway station here is not accessible but there are escalators from the lower level platforms (F train) directly up to the street. Going down to any part of the station, it’s all stairs. Underground, just south of the upper level platforms (J and M trains), is the former streetcar terminal for the bridge, unused since 1948. In recent years there was a proposal to turn that area into an underground park, a sort of subterranean High Line, but nothing has come of that.
This area is seeing a lot of change. The City-owned, 1930s-era Essex Street Retail Market is shuttered and derelict. Across Delancey Street is the gleaming new Essex Market high-rise, to which the vendors from the old market and others have moved. The Essex Street Market and others like it were built by the City to get food vendors off the street and into modern, sanitary facilities. Six remain; read about them at https://publicmarkets.nyc/our-markets. In much the same spirit, but over a much longer time, the City’s wholesale food markets were moved to Hunts Point in the Bronx. My friends at Turnstile Tours lead occasional visits to these markets; check them out at https://turnstiletours.com/.
The block of Delancey Street east of Essex Street used to be home to Ratner’s, a kosher dairy restaurant (yes to fish, no to other meat) renowned for their blintzes. On the other side of Delancey, in a row of small shops, was a hat shop where I once bought a fedora. All gone in favor of a new mixed-use development called Essex Crossing.
Menu from Ratner’s, 1953.
The Williamsburg Bridge was the second bridge to be built spanning the East River and replaced a ferry that ran just to the north, from Grand Street in Manhattan to Grand Street in Brooklyn. It was begun in 1896 and took seven years to build. The chief engineer was a son of Brooklyn with a very old Brooklyn Dutch name: Leffert Lefferts Buck.
Plaque at the Manhattan end of the bridge.
The bridge was designed to carry heavy foot traffic, streetcars, and Brooklyn elevated trains. It opened to great fanfare in 1903. Part of the opening day procession was captured on film.
Once the bridge opened, people started moving out of the slums of the Lower East Side to new housing in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In Yiddish it was called the Naiye Brick, or New Bridge. It was also known as “the Jews’ Highway.” People who moved to Williamsburg walked over the bridge to work. Brooklyn elevated trains started operating over the bridge to a temporary terminal at Essex Street in 1908, and by 1918 this was upgraded to subway service.
The bridge was plagued by years of not being properly maintained and was closed in 1988 for emergency repairs after one of the suspension cables snapped. That wasn’t all: according to The New York Times on 17 April 1988,
The main cause of corrosion on the Williamsburg Bridge is salt, which is placed on the roadway to melt snow or is sprayed up from the East River. A continuing flow of salt water turns structural steel members into batteries that begin to corrode. This so-called corrosion cell activity has been particularly damaging to the steel floor beams in the roadway of the bridge. City engineers said at least 30 of the bridge's floor beams were severely corroded.
The same article noted
Perhaps the most severe problem with the bridge is the corroding of the four large cables. The cables, which consist of more than 7,000 different wires, are in disrepair because they were not galvanized when the bridge was built. The problems began to appear as early as 1910, engineers said. Several early efforts to remedy the corrosion failed.
The bridge was built with two foot paths but by the first time I biked across it, around 1990, only one was open and it was in poor condition. There was some thought given to demolishing and replacing the bridge. Extensive rehabilitation began in 1992 and proceeded in stages for the next ten years. Separate bicycle and pedestrian paths were installed, except for a combined path at the Manhattan end, and the new paths comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Part of the elevated subway structure at the Brooklyn end was replaced by a precast concrete structure.
The entrance to the bike and pedestrian path at the Manhattan end has a suitably grand portal that recalls some of the bridge’s original aesthetic elements.
At the vanishing point of the footpath in the above image, it divides into two, with foot traffic on the right (south) side and bicycles on the north side.
North (Manhattan-bound) roadway, bicycle path, subway tracks, south (Brooklyn-bound) roadway, pedestrian path.
The first time I biked over the bridge, I was in awe of how much steel there was in the structure. It is as though every steel mill in America had been pressed into service for the construction of this bridge.
All this steel! And graffiti - some of it clever, some boring, some snarkily vacuous - covers the pedestrian path from beginning to end.
From the Brooklyn anchorage to the end of the pedestrian path the descent is slightly steep and I walked with some care. From the end of the path turn right (Bedford Avenue), then cross and turn left on Broadway, continuing to the subway at Marcy Avenue or to one of the many bus lines serving the area.
The Williamsburg Bridge is very well used by walkers, runners, and cyclists. At either end of the bridge is an area undergoing great change: demographic on both sides, de-industrialization and residential redevelopment of the waterfront in Brooklyn. This was an easy and very interesting walk.
