Forgotten New York

LEMON CREEK BRIDGE, Prince’s Bay

Kevin Walsh

By SERGEY KADINSKY
Forgotten NY correspondent

When we think of the city’s oldest drawbridges, the retractable examples on Borden Avenue across Dutch Kills and Carroll Street across Gowanus Canal come to mind. But those crossings are operated by machines. If we could go back in time to find the city’s last human-powered drawbridge, where would it be?

The answer would take us to Prince’s Bay, a rural corner of the city that is still today happily underdeveloped. Lemon Creek on the South Shore of Staten Island, reported in a 1955 article by New York Times. The bridge connected Seguine Avenue to Johnston Terrace.

It was at the mouth of Lemon Creek that a drawbridge was constructed in 1848. Powered by a four-foot iron key, the operator manually turned it sixty times to retract the one-lane wooden bridge onto the western bank.

 
I have no idea when this bridge was automated or demolished. Today, the only evidence of this bridge, on Johnston Terrace east of Bayview Avenue, are the electric wires that connect to lampposts on either side of Lemon Creek. A 1980 aerial survey shows that there was still a bridge across Lemon Creek, but by then it was powered by machine.
 
Would anyone know the year that the Lemon Creek Drawbridge turned its key for the final time?
 
3/31/15