Queensboro Bridge

Listen first. Under your feet, or just overhead, there is a low and steady hum. It is the sound of tyres on steel, carried through a great web of riveted iron and stone. Look up and the bridge does not curve the way most famous bridges do. There are no swooping cables here. Instead, a dense lattice of dark steel climbs, crosses, and climbs again, like the frame of a giant machine left out above the river.

This is the Queensboro Bridge. It links Manhattan, near East 59th Street, with Long Island City in Queens. Most New Yorkers simply call it the 59th Street Bridge. In 2011 the city also gave it a third name, the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge, after the former mayor. You will hear all three. They all point to the same long span of steel crossing the East River.

The bridge opened in 1909. Its timing matters. In 1898, the separate cities and towns around New York joined together into one greater city of five boroughs. Queens was suddenly part of New York, but it was cut off by water. This crossing was one of the great projects meant to stitch the new city together. It turned farmland and small towns across the river into neighbourhoods within easy reach of Midtown.

Now look again at that steel. The Queensboro is a cantilever bridge. That means each section reaches out from a tower and balances, a little like two arms held out from the shoulders. The engineering was led by Gustav Lindenthal, the city's bridge commissioner at the time. It is heavy and strong rather than graceful. In an era that loved soaring suspension bridges, this one chose muscle over elegance... and that is exactly why so many people love it.

Here is the first detail many visitors miss. The bridge does not cross the river in one leap. It lands, in effect, in the middle. Its towers stand on Roosevelt Island, the narrow strip of land between Manhattan and Queens. For decades, people could even stop on the bridge and ride an elevator down to the island below. That elevator is long gone, but the towers still stand on the island today.

The decorative touches came from the architect Henry Hornbostel. Look at the tops of the towers. You will see pointed finials, small spires of steel that give the bridge a slightly Gothic outline against the sky. Down at the Manhattan end, look for the stone piers and the massive masonry approaches. The bridge was meant to feel civic and permanent, a gateway as much as a road.

Now for the second surprise. Walk around to the Manhattan side, under the approach ramps near First Avenue. Beneath the roadway is a space with a vaulted ceiling of pale, interlocking tiles. These are Guastavino tiles, a building system named after the Spanish-born family firm that created it. The same tile vaults appear in some of New York's grandest train stations and halls. Here they sit quietly under a bridge, and for years many people passed by without ever looking up.

The bridge has also lived a long life in books, music, and film. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald writes that the city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time. It is one of the most quoted lines about New York. In the 1960s, Simon and Garfunkel recorded The 59th Street Bridge Song, the cheerful tune many people know as Feelin' Groovy.

Film came too. In Woody Allen's 1979 film Manhattan, two characters sit on a bench at dawn, looking at this very bridge. The scene appears on countless posters. That view, from the quiet streets of Sutton Place near the river, is still there. If you have time, walk a few blocks south along the Manhattan side and find your own version of that frame.

Traffic has changed many times over the decades. The bridge has two decks, and over the years it has carried carriages, trolleys, cars, and trains. Today it carries a large share of the traffic flowing between Queens and Manhattan. The subway also runs beneath the river close by. For pedestrians and cyclists, there is a path along the outer roadway. Crossing on foot is one of the best ways to understand the scale of the steel around you.

If you walk it, notice how the view changes as you climb. First come the rooftops of the Upper East Side and the water towers perched on old buildings. Then the river opens beneath you, often grey-green and fast-moving. Tugboats and barges slide past. On Roosevelt Island, you will see trees, apartment blocks, and the long, narrow shape of the island stretching north and south.

There is one more neighbour worth watching. Running right alongside the bridge is the Roosevelt Island Tramway, an aerial cable car that opened in the 1970s. Its red cabins glide through the air beside the steel, carrying commuters between Manhattan and the island. From the tram, you get a close look at the bridge's latticework. From the bridge, the tram looks like a small toy moving past a giant.

As evening comes, the bridge lights up and the steel turns to a long line of glowing points over the water. On the Queens side, Long Island City has grown tall in recent years, with glass towers reflecting the old structure. Standing here, you can see more than a century of the city at once: the heavy steel of 1909, the tram of the 1970s, the new towers of today.

So take a moment before you move on. Listen again for that low hum of traffic through the steel. Look up at the finials on the towers, at the rivets, at the river below. Perhaps you are seeing the city, as Fitzgerald wrote, for the first time. And when you walk away, glance back once. The bridge will still be there, working quietly, carrying the city across the water.