The predawn snow: one of few photos from up top during the 'old school'
days. Don't ask why we went when we did... it's just plain pornographic.
Conrail Freight train to Oak Point yard in the Bronx crosses the bridge
in 1989. Note the sinister, filthy and massive queens side bridge
base...
Here we see a different angle from around 1989, while the bridge was
still black with rust, with much white graffiti on the upper arch
(not too visible in this photo...)...
A 1994 angle from Astoria Park, with the big green tarp over the main
span arch for lead paint removal.
1996 - after a good coat or 3 of red paint, and sandblasting of years
worth of grime off the towers.
And from the insanity files comes this shot of the daily conrail freight
in a 1989 blizzard, halfway back from the mile long approach to the
main bridge span. If I recall right, the engineer waved at us, and
we hopped in a boxcar perhaps 30 cars back and hitched a ride off
this god forsakenly long bridge - made longer by the snow.
The return... tri borough bridge is to the left.
Checking the schedule.
The massive structure of the main span
 Sane tag on the randalls
is. tower. Further down the bridge JA & FOE bombed piers visible
from the parallel TriBourough.
Looking South...
The TriBorough and the swirling waters below.
The long way.
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so far as I'm concerned, there is only
one bridge in NYC that matters. Only one bridge worth climbing. Only
one bridge shrouded in more ghost stories and urban legends than you
could fit into a 200 page issue of Weird
NJ. It is the hell gate bridge, in astoria, queens.
Hell Gate (or "Hell's Gate")is a massive structure, connecting
queens to the Bronx, passing over wards/randalls island along the
way. The length of the approach viaducts and main span equals 3.2
miles of steel suspended on average 10 stories above the ground. Construction
began on it in 1914 and was completed by 1916. When opened, it was
the longest steel arch bridge in the world (it is currently #17 on
that list!). The main span which crosses the east river is 1017 feet,
6 nches long. A 350 foot section which crosses the Bronx kill was
originally designed to be a lift drawbridge, but this waterway was
eventually largely filled in with dirt. It contains 3 tracks - 2 for
Amtrak use and 1 for freight trains (a 4th, northernmost freight track
was removed in the 70's or 80's)
The viaduct approach to the main span is held up by concrete piers.
The original plan called for using steel piers, but concern over the
prospect of inmates at the mental institution on wards island (which
the bridge passes above) climbing the piers to escape over the bridge
aided in the decision to change this plan.
Hells gate was constructed with the sole purpose of connecting the
Pennsylvania and New Haven railways, creating direct passenger rail
service from New York to Boston. It also provided a direct route for
freight to enter NYC and Long Island.
Over the decades, the introduction of the automobile diminished passenger
traffic on the railroads to a point where in the early 1970's the
federal government took over responsibility for this service with
the creation of Amtrak. Around the same time, the Pennsylvania railroad
merged with the New York Central, and was forced by the government
to take in the bankrupt New Haven as well, thus creating the Penn
Central railway, which soon too went bankrupt and gave way to still
another government sponsored railway: Conrail. Unlike Amtrak, Conrail
eventually turned a profit and was sold to CSX and Norfolk Southern.
Now why is any of this important you ask? Because during the Conrail
and Penn Central years, freight traffic over the Hell Gate dropped
like a brick. Eventually, the northern most track on the bridge was
ripped out for lack of use. While Amtrak was maintaining a schedule
of perhaps 14 passenger trains a day, Conrail was down to one round
trip from the Bronx to long island. Even this was cut from a 7 day
per week operation to 5 during the early and mid 1990's. It didn't
help that the Long Island Rail Road, primarily a commuter railway,
was still operating all the freight on long island and had little
interest in keeping customers. Thus the base of traffic eroded still
further...
Today though, Amtrak still runs it's trains over the southern/westernmost
2 tracks of the bridge. As part of the deal for CSX to buy Conrail,
they had to grant the Canadian Pacific railway the right to use the
freight track to long island. Before Conrail was bought, they agreed
to let another carrier, Providence and Worchester, haul long trains
of rock over the line, and LIRR finally got smart and farmed out it's
freight operations to a for-profit 'shortline' railway known as the
New York and Atlantic. The result has been that where there was once
only a short weekday only haul of freight over the bridge, there is
now a regular weekday morning csx freight, averaging anywhere from
20 to 80 cars, as well as the Canadian pacific freight 3 nights a
week, and the P&W which makes one round trip to LI in the summer
months. On a busy 24 hour period, 5 freights might pass over the bridge
where just a 2 or 3 years ago there'd be only 2. Regardless of this,
the bridge is still quite under utilized.
All of the above flip flopping in ownership and rights of use of the
bridge created a dilemma in the later 80's and 1990's. Simply put:
the bridge had not been seriously maintained or painted since it was
built! Rocks were beginning to fall off of the bridge, damaging houses
and cars parked below. With ownership having changed so many times,
and the cost of maintaince as high as it is, conrail & amtrak
pointed the figure at each other as being the party that should pay
for the work, likely wrangling and dragging the situation out in court,
This lead to then NY state Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (who grew
up in astoria) to finally give in and get $55 million dollars out
of the federal government to paint and spruce up the bridge. Work
began in 1994, and was completed in 1996. This cleaning and painting
work has taken away much of the menacing look the bridge eventually
gained in the 1970s - coated in old school graffiti, with it's towers
darked by decades of dirt and grime. It didn't even have the 3 red
warning beacons on top of it to make it visable to aircraft. It outright
looked like the sinister gates to hell, and there certainly were enough
urban legends to add to that feel.
Growing up in astoria in the 1970s, it was impossible to not hear
the ghost stories and urban legends - the tales of kids going up there,
seeing lights of trains that just never seemed to come, and when they
did, they were filled with the lost souls of the Spanish and Dutch
explorers who's boats legend has it sank in the turbulent currents
directly below the bridge for which it was named after. It is here
that long island sound, as well as the east and Harlem rivers converge
- making for currents that have claimed many a live and made the location
an ideal dumping ground for victims of the Mafia over the decades.
An occasional skull or bone has been known to wash ashore...
And while not drowning in the water below the bridge or being chased
by demons on the bridge span itself, there were legends of a child
molesting homeless rapist, who would grab kids and drag them into
the massive chamber in the base of the bridge blindfolded. According
to legend, when the police finally figured out where he was dragging
the kids to and stormed the place, they found areas covered wall to
wall of photos of said kids being raped. The sickly smell sent investigators
out to the park to throw up in the nearest trash can.
With stories like these, if you were a male, grew up in astoria at
the time, and didn't have the balls to go up on the bridge, you just
weren't as cool as you shoulda been (not that I knew many who actually
did ). It is important to note here that no other bridge in NYC that
I know of shares this same near mythological status. The neighboring
Tri-Bourgh bridge, infinity better known as thousands of cars per
day cross it, never attracted the allure that Hells Gate did. Neither
did the 59th street bridge still further south on the river... The
others were transparent. Anyone could get in a car or subway and ride
over them. Hells Gate offers no auto lanes, no subway tracks. Just
freight trains and Amtrak to Boston... The fact that throughout the
70s and 80s it was a rusting, dirty, decaying bridge hardly used in
comparison to the others in NYC, combined with the urban legends and
lack of easy access created the neighborhood challenge. The benchmark
of danger and endurance. Could you do it? would you?
The bridge was a right of passage. From boy to teen. For me, it was
one of the very first places explored at depth, and a constant subject
of my shutter whenever I was nearby with a camera in hand.
It had been years since I was up there. 13 years to be exact. I never
did manage to get any simple photos of the bridge itself the few times
I actually had my camera with me. At first, going back seemed routine.
We walked on up to it in the cover of darkness and depth of night.
Access to the base of the bridge was locked up tight on all fronts
(not entirely unexpected, as it has been more secure since it's painting...).
The view, of course, was breathtaking. I can think of no other place
in this city where one might walk for a mile so high above the streets,
looking down on the 3-6 floor high buildings that compose the majority
of Astoria while being able to see the the skyline and every other
bridge in the area, as far as the George Washington and Throgs Neck...
In retrospect, returning was like going back to see an old friend...
Many, many explorers love to climb bridges. Legandary bridgeman and
suicide clubber John Law has a photo or two from up top of the hell
gate in his slide show. Smith, Jaf, Ripe & PK have graffiti bombed
this bridge over the years, but none of that matters to me. In my
world, me and hells gate go waaay back. Others can come and go, but
me... I know I'll be back.
(Post Script, when I wrote the above, I surely didn't think I'd be getting
engaged up there a year later... Maybe we'll have a post wedding party up there...)
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