"Slow down, you move too fast, you've got
to make the morning last.
Just kickin' down the cobble-stones,
lookin' for fun and feeling groovy."
--Simon & Garfunkel
THE QUEENSBORO BRIDGE, best known as the 59th Street
Bridge, was made famous in the
sixties by singers, Simon and Garfunkel,
with their recording of the 59th
Street Bridge Song, “Feeling Groovy.” (Both
Simon and Garfunkel grew up in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens and often
journeyed across the bridge to Manhattan.) The bridge, also known as the Queensboro Bridge,
connects Queens to Manhattan, and offers views
of midtown Manhattan, the Chrysler
Building, the Empire State
Building and the United
Nations. The two-decked cantilever
bridge was opened to traffic in March 30, 1909.
Its engineer was Gustav
Lindenthal and its architect, Henry
Hornblostel. Blackwell’s Island Bridge was its original name for Blackwell’s
Island (now Roosevelt Island), owned by
the Blackwell family for over 150 years until the City purchased it in
1828. (A painting of Blackwell’s Island
was done by the artist, Edwin Hopper, when he was living at 59th
Street in 1911.) Throughout its history, Roosevelt Island – in
the middle of the East River, -- has had a penitentiary, the first mental
asylum in America -- the Municipal Lunatic Asylum (1839); a Smallpox Hospital
(1854), Goldwater, Metropolitan and City Hospitals and a school of Nursing (the
country’s third) and a small unit for the city’s municipal jail system’s
terminally-ill inmates.. The island has also
been known as Hogs
Island and Welfare
Island. Its last name change to Roosevelt Island occurred in 1972.
The Roosevelt Island Tram (bottom) is actually
a Swiss cable car (at 60th
Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan). The tram, which began operation in 1976, connects Manhattan
to Roosevelt Island in a four-minute ride over the bridge and the East River, rising to 250 feet at approximately 16 miles
per hour. On April 18, 2006, the Tram malfunctioned
and its passengers were suspended over the East River
for over 11 hours. The 68 passengers were
rescued by ingenious firefighters and policemen.
