THIS sort of escaped my notice as I had no idea that a new pedestrian bridge spanning the pedal-to-the-metal West Street (formerly the West Side Highway) opened during 2021; like the new Denny Farrell Bridge in Washington Heights, I didn’t know it existed until I saw it. It was constructed in tandem with the new 64-story residential skyscraper, 50 West and connects JP Ward Street (a tiny thoroughfare at the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel) with West Thames Street in Battery Park City.
The Architectural Record calls the Robert R. Douglass Bridge “the last piece of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s (LMDC) plan for rebuilding and restoring the area below Houston Street affected by the destruction of the World Trade Center towers.” That’s quite a claim! The lenticular truss bridge took 7 years and $45 million to complete and is the handsomest of the pedestrian spans across West Street with the possible exception of the bridge at Chambers Street leading to Stuyvesant High School. The bridge was named for the late head of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation .
The Douglass Bridge was fabricated in metal shops in New York and Pennsylvania and assembled in Red Hook, Brooklyn until it was ready to be positioned, and was moved by barge up bay to West Street. An open design permits views up and down West Street. Best of all, it doesn’t sway like Brooklyn Heights’ old Squibb Bridge, so no seasickness will result from crossing it.
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1/28/22