I have always considered the massive concrete arches that lift railroad tracks to the Hell Gate Bridge over the streets of northwest Astoria almost as imposing as the arch bridge itself. Tracks, arches and bridge were constructed from 1914-1917 and connect Pennsylvania Station, the Sunnyside Yards, and southern Queens with the northeast United States.
HELLGATE ARCHES
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The mighty arches and piers are earth-filled concrete; the earth was excavated from the Sunnyside yards. See p. 6 of January 4, 1914 Brooklyn Eagle. Potential puzzle for some future archeologist — what to make of the entombed content? Surely somewhere within will be found farm implements, relics of British troop encampments on the Paynter and Bragaw farms, bones of animals wild and domestic, etc.
I was in NYC back in 1996 and some idiot had painted the bridge fuschia!!
NYC had already begun to look like a Lego set rather than the gray/neon metropolis of my growing up days there(1946-76 with time out for the service)-even the Bowery has become gentrified.Yech.
Massive engineering project considering it was 85 years ago.
I used to live on 28th Street, a few blocks from one of these arches. They were always a lowering feature of the landscape, but they are so big and so high that they really don’t chop up a neighborhood the way that an elevated highway or an el line does: there is a kind of monumental comfort about them.