WHERE: The 145 Street Bridge and the Macombs Dam Bridge over the Harlem River
START: 145 Street subway station (3 train)
FINISH: 168 Street subway station (A and C trains, fully accessible; 1 train, not accessible)
DISTANCE: 3.26 miles (5.25 kilometers)
Photographs by Michael Cairl except where noted. Map courtesy footpathapp.com.
Route of this walk, reading bottom to top, and profile of this walk, reading left to right.
On this unseasonably warm (73F/22C) November day I continued my new series of walking the walkable bridges in New York City by crossing two that span the Harlem River. The Harlem River, like the East River, isn’t really a river with a source and a mouth. These are estuaries, in a sense branches of the Hudson River but also part of Long Island Sound. I started the walk at the subway station at West 145 Street and Lenox Avenue. This station is an oddity in the subway system. It opened in late 1904 as the northernmost station on the Lenox Avenue line, which it was until 1968. A few blocks to the south the tunnel that carries the 2 train diverges from the Lenox Avenue line and continues to the Bronx. Just north of the 145 Street station the line rises to the surface and continues west past Lenox Yard to the 148 Street station at Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. Lenox Yard was for decades the site of the principal maintenance and repair shops of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company. The repair shops closed in the 1960s and an apartment complex was built over the subway yards. The New York City Transit Authority wanted to close the 145 Street station but community pressure has kept it open.
What makes this station an oddity? One cannot enter the station on the uptown side; the stairs on the uptown side are exit-only. Like most of the original subway stations, the platforms were only long enough for five-car trains. After World War II those stations that remained open had their platforms lengthened to accommodate longer trains, except the Grand Central and Times Square shuttle stations (which have shorter trains to this day), the original South Ferry station (now out of service), and the 145 Street station. One has to be in one of the first five cars to exit the station. 145 Street station got a facelift in recent years through the MTA’s Enhanced Station Initiative; the original mosaics and terra cotta cartouches are complemented by new art work.
Around the corner from the subway entrance is the approach to the 145 Street Bridge, which links West 145 Street in Manhattan and West 149 Street in the Bronx. This is a swing bridge. The bridge opened in 1905 but the swing span was replaced in 2006 with a look-alike span that was floated into place.
145 Street Bridge viewed from the north. Photo by Arnoldius - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24602137
The bridge has respectable pedestrian traffic: many people seemed to be going to or from the shopping mall built on the site of the Bronx Terminal Market. The city built the market in 1935 to house wholesale dealers in perishable foods. Eventually all the wholesalers here and at other markets moved to the Hunts Point Terminal Market in the south Bronx. One small bit of the Bronx Terminal Market remains at West 149 Street. I love that letteriing at the top of the building!
Original entrance, Mott Avenue station, looking west on East 149 Street. Photo (1940) from the New-York Historical Society.
I walked east (uphill) on 149 Street to the Grand Concourse and another subway story. When the subway opened to the Bronx in 1905 there was a station here called Mott Avenue, the original name of what is now the southern end of the Concourse. Owing to the underwater tunnel and the sharp rise in the land, this station was (and is) a deep one. Until the station was enlarged in 1918 with a second line on an upper level, the only access to the station was by elevators from a small station house at the southwest corner of this intersection. This entrance was closed many years ago but is getting a revival as part of a project to make the whole station complex fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The station house is being rebuilt for elevator access from the street, and the original terra cotta station tablet will be preserved.
149 Street - Grand Concourse station: rendering of rebuilt station house (top) and cutaway of station complex as rebuilt. Design and images by STV Incorporated.
Remains of the old station house, at the same location where the new one is being built. Look closely for the “Mott Avenue Station” tablet that will be preserved on the new station house.
This is a busy area, with Hostos Community College on the south side of 149 Street and on both sides of the Concourse, the Bronx General Post Office at the northeast corner, Lincoln Hospital two blocks east, and Cardinal Hayes High School two blocks north. I walked north on the Concourse past Franz Sigel Park and the Bronx County Court House, on the Concourse between East 158 and East 161 Streets, a masterpiece of municipal architecture from the 1930s.
Bronx County Court House.
I turned west on 161 Street, a wide and busy thoroughfare, past small businesses that depend on traffic from the Court House and Yankee Stadium, past the elevated subway station at River Avenue, past Yankee Stadium and the baseball fields built - after years of delay - on the site of the first Yankee Stadium, to the Macombs Dam Bridge. Built in 1895, this is actually two bridges: a truss span over the Metro North Railroad tracks and a swing span over the Harlem River.
Pattern from the original balustrade on the Macombs Dam Bridge walkway.
From Wikipedia:
The first bridge at the site was constructed in 1814 as a true dam called Macombs Dam. Because of complaints about the dam's impact on the Harlem River's navigability, the dam was demolished in 1858 and replaced three years later with a wooden swing bridge called the Central Bridge, which required frequent maintenance. The current steel span was built between 1892 and 1895, while the 155th Street Viaduct was built from 1890 to 1893; both were designed by Alfred Pancoast Boller. The Macombs Dam Bridge is the third-oldest major bridge still operating in New York City, and along with the 155th Street Viaduct, was designated a New York City Landmark in 1992.
Macombs Dam Bridge from 155 Street Viaduct, 1899. Photo Museum of the City of New York via urbanarchive.org.
The pedestrian approach to the Bronx end of the bridge is not straightforward; there are curb cuts but one has to look for them. There is a lot of traffic exiting the bridge to the southbound Major Deegan Expressway (Interstate 87) and I had to be even more alert than usual there. At the Manhattan end of the bridge I could not proceed directly to the 155 Street Viaduct, but had to go south on a less-than-ideal sidewalk to a crosswalk at West 153 Street, then cross Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard, then double back to the viaduct. The pedestrian passage from the Bronx to the viaduct can be made straightforward and safe, not so motorist-centered. Department of Transportation, please do it.
The 155 Street Viaduct starts at the Macombs Dam Bridge on the east, then ascends to West 155 Street at St. Nicholas Place, the Harlem River Driveway, and Edgecombe Avenue. The ascent of the viaduct is not particularly steep but it is long, and the climb was a good workout. Below the viaduct is Frederick Douglass Boulevard and to the north is the site of the Polo Grounds. See my post “The One-Fifties (Upper Manhattan)” on “The Stair Streets of New York City” page for a description of the area and the long flight of stairs going from West 155 Street up to the viaduct.
Once I got to the top of the viaduct, I turned north on Edgecombe Avenue, climbing past the John T. Brush Stairway, the Paul Robeson house, and the Morris-Jumel Mansion, all of which featured in the “Harlem and Heights History Walk (Manhattan)” on the “Other Walks Around Town” page. Before heading to the subway and home, I stopped for a tasty lunch at a hole-in-the-wall Singaporean noodle house, Native Noodles, on a nondescript block of Amsterdam Avenue. The restaurant has two steps up to the door and no handrail, but they very kindly set me up with a table and chair outside. I’ll be back.
This was a good workout of a walk with plenty of interesting things along the way and a big smile and encouragement from a passerby on the 155 Street Viaduct, all on a beautiful day. It was a good way ro mark the fourth anniversary (plus one day) of my stroke. And there are many more walkable bridges, returns to stair streets, and other walks to come.