WHERE: The Third Avenue Bridge and the Manhattan and Bronx legs of the Robert F. Kennedy (Triborough) Bridge
START: 3 Avenue - 138 Street subway station (6 train)
FINISH: Brook Avenue subway station (6 train)
DISTANCE: 3.27 miles (5.26 kilometers)
Photographs by Michael Cairl except as noted. Map courtesy footpathmap.org.
Route of this walk, reading from left to right.
On this trip I walked across three more of New York’s walkable bridges, starting and finishing in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx. At the start of the walk is a triangle bounded by Third Avenue, Lincoln Avenue, and East 137 Street, in the middle of which is a monument to the Bronx men who died in the Spanish-American War in 1898.
From there I walked to East 135 Street, where I crossed to the opposite (west) side of Third Avenue, then continued to the Third Avenue Bridge. This is the third Third Avenue Bridge, all on the same site. The first bridge, built in 1898, was replaced in 1955, and that span was replaced in 2004 - 2005.
Third Avenue Bridge.
At the Manhattan end of the bridge the walk continued on a footbridge over the exit ramp to the Harlem River Drive. The footpath itself curves around a playground to the Harlem River Drive.
Footbridge at the Manhattan end of the Third Avenue Bridge.
Mural at P.S. 30, East 128 Street and Lexington Avenue.
From there I walked east on East 128 Street to 3 Avenue. There is a three-way footbridge to take pedestrians over another exit ramp from the bridge and over East 128 Street. Both footbridges date from the 1955 incarnation of the bridge. While I’m glad there was some thought given to keeping pedestrians safe from motor traffic, it certainly is obvious that accommodating motor traffic was, and in many ways still is, paramount. Neither stairway is wheelchair-accessible. The park and the “Crack is Wack” playground on the north side of East 128 Street are on the site of the 129 Street terminal and repair shop of the Second and Third Avenue elevated railways, demolished after the discontinuance of the Third Avenue el in Manhattan in 1955.
Three-way footbridge at 3 Avenue and East 128 Street.
129 Street terminal, from the corner of 3 Avenue and East 128 Street, 1941. From the collection of Herbert P. Maruska by way of nycsubway.org.
At the corner of 3 Avenue and East 127 Street is the United Moravian Church, which was advertising an upcoming revival.
United Moravian Church
The footpath on the Triborough Bridge is on the south side and access is from 2 Avenue and East 124 Street. On a fence near the entrance is a sad little memorial to a young man who must have been killed there, probably by traffic.
The Triborough Bridge was the brainchild of Robert Moses (1888 - 1981), whose legacy is parks, highways, and public housing projects that are to be found all over New York City and Long Island. The definitive history of Robert Moses and his legacy is The Power Broker by Robert Caro. I cannot recommend this highly enough to students of urban planning, students of politics, anyone. Moses illustrates the truth that we all walk this earth leaving a mixed legacy. The Triborough Bridge, completed in 1936, links the Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens as a hub-and-spoke system with its hub on Randall’s Island. In time, the route from Queens to the Bronx would become part of Interstate 278, and the Manhattan leg would connect with the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive and Harlem River Drive. I have biked across all three legs of the bridge in the past, and wrote about walking the Queens leg in 2021 in the post “From Queens to the Bronx” on this page, but until this walk had never traversed the other two legs on foot.
The Manhattan leg is a vertical lift span whose towers’ steel structure is vaguely reminiscent of the towers of the George Washington Bridge,
Manhattan leg of the Triborough Bridge, 1936. Photograph by Berenice Abbott.
The Manhattan span has a well-maintained foot and bicycle path on the south side, with a gentle grade walking from Manhattan but a fairly steep ramp down to Randall’s Island.
Foot and bicycle path on the Manhattan leg of the Triborough Bridge.
Looking south from the Manhattan leg of the Triborough Bridge. The arch bridge in the background is the Hell Gate Bridge, used by passenger and freight trains. The suspension bridge to its right is the Queens leg of the Triborough Bridge.
Seen on the ramp to Randall’s Island.
From the bottom of the ramp, turn right, but at the next sign, pointing the way to Queens and the Bronx, do not turn right but go straight ahead, staying on the road and being watchful for the occasional car. Move over to the foot and bike path on the left when it appears.
Randall’s Island and Ward’s Island to the south used to be separated by water, but that body of water, known as Little Hell Gate, has been filled in. The combined island is home to numerous athletic fields and other athletic facilities, picnicking areas, a salt marsh, offices of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, Fire Department facilities, a psychiatric hospital, and more. The parks are maintained by the Randall’s Island Park Alliance, a public-private partnership. Native Americans called Ward’s Island Tenkenas which translated to "Wild Lands" or "uninhabited place", whereas Randall’s Island was called Minnehanonck. The islands were acquired by Wouter Van Twiller, Director General of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, in July 1637. The island's first European names were Great Barent Island (Ward’s) and Little Barent Island (Randall’s) after a Danish cowherd named Barent Jansen Blom. Both islands' names changed several times. At times Randalls was known as "Buchanan's Island" and "Great Barn Island", both of which were likely corruptions of Great Barent Island. Both islands acquired their present names from their new owners after the American Revolution.
The walk continued on the Bronx Shore Path past baseball fields to the Bronx leg of the bridge. Until the Randall’s Island Connector (described in the post “From Queens to the Bronx” on this page) opened in 2015, the only direct bike and pedestrian route from Randall’s Island to the Bronx was on the Triborough Bridge. The ramp up to the bridge is somewhat steep and has four 90-degree turns, but the walkway is clean and well-maintained, and other people were using it despite the ground-level Randall’s Island Connector being nearby. Going up the ramp, at the “T” intersection go left. A switchback ramp down to the Bronx has an easy slope. It was built in the 1980s to replace stairs.
At the bottom of the ramp up to the Bronx leg of the Triborough Bridge.
On the Bronx leg of the Triborough Bridge, near the top of the ramp from Randall’s Island.
A lot of this part of the Bronx shoreline between the Major Deegan Expressway (Interstate 87) and the waterway called the Bronx Kill is industrial, including a freight rail yard, a Department of Sanitation garage, and a large facility of the New York home-delivery grocer Fresh Direct. Here and there are surprises, like the South Bronx Charter School for International Culture and the Arts, and where I had lunch on this trip, Milk Burger, at the corner of Bruckner Boulevard and St Ann’s Avenue. Not only was the hamburger well worth gong back for, which I will do sooner than later, but I struck up a good conversation with the owner, Erik Mayor, who besides offering a hamburger well worth the trip back to the Bronx has done a lot of good work in this very underprivileged part of the city.
South Bronx Charter School for International Culture and the Arts.
From lunch I walked north on St. Ann’s Avenue and west on this area’s main commercial street, East 138 Street, to the subway at Brook Avenue.
This walk included panoramas of a changing city and closeups that at once echo and defy the panoramas. Not far from the “perfumed stockade” of the Upper East Side of Manhattan, as the late writer Theodore White described it, and not far from the glassy new residential buildings in Mott Haven, a large, poor, proud community gets on with life. This was an easy walk but not one that was wholly wheelchair-accessible. The subway stations where the walk started and finished are not accessible and I had to walk down the ramp to Randall’s Island with care, owing to its steepness.
I think about this walk glad that there are some accommodations for pedestrians and bicyclists but not glad that we are an afterthought in the primacy of motor vehicles. This was part of the mixed legacy of Robert Moses. Thinking about that three-way footbridge on East 128 Street, why can’t pedestrians and bicyclists have a safe ground-level approach to and from the Third Avenue Bridge? These people didn’t matter much to planners like Robert Moses (he was by no means alone). Over the years some improvements have been made to pedestrian and bicycle accommodations at the Triborough Bridge but more are needed, here and throughout the city.