Broadway Bridge (Manhattan)

About

The Broadway Bridge is a vertical-lift bridge across the Harlem River Ship Canal in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It connects the neighborhoods of Inwood on Manhattan Island and Marble Hill on the mainland. The bridge consists of two decks. The lower deck carries Broadway, which is designated as U.S. Route 9 at this location. The upper deck carries the New York City Subway's IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line, serving the 1 train.

The site was previously occupied by two successive swing bridges. The first, known as the Harlem Ship Canal Bridge, was built between 1893 and 1895 to cross the canal, which had been constructed to bypass a meandering alignment of the Spuyten Duyvil Creek. By the first decade of the 20th century, the construction of the city's first subway line had made the original bridge obsolete, and a double-decker span called the 225th Street Bridge was built to accommodate the subway line above highway traffic. Between 1905 and 1906, the second bridge was installed, and the first bridge was relocated southward on the Harlem River, becoming the University Heights Bridge.