Crossing the Hamilton

There's another bridge without a pedestrian path next to High Bridge - the Alexander Hamilton Bridge that serves as an extension of the Cross Bronx Expressway. Its sole purpose is to funnel traffic from the Cross Bronx over into Manhattan and out to the George Washington Bridge. As part of the Interstate Highway system, it doesn't have a pedestrian path.



Photo courtesy of Shane Perez - www.shaneperez.com

As much as I like walking across bridges, I have to admit there isn't much need for one - it's not a heavily trafficed route, the Washington Bridge path is right next to it, and the High Bridge path will (supposedly) open soon as well. Still, that didn't stop me from trying to find a way to cross it one summer day.

The Alexander Hamilton bridge has a flat roadbed, supported by a steel arch underneath, arcing from the Bronx shore of the Harlem River to the Manhattan shore. I figured I could walk this underneath arch and knock it off the list. A couple friends and I decided to give it a shot.

Now these friends are photographers, and sometimes photographers have a tendency to take risks for the sake of pretty pictures that us non-photographers wouldn't. One of these was to do this underneath transverse during the day. We drove out there in the early evening.

The Bronx support of the bridge is in Roberto Clemente State Park, which has to be the least utilized waterfront park in the City. It has a lovely view of the river and the bridges, as well as a nice peaceful atmosphere. I'd been down there a time or two before, and the only people I had ever run across were a father and son fishing. This time was different. First we passed a police car. Then another unmarked car rolled by when we had parked the car and were hanging out debating what to do. Then the first police car passed us coming back.

This is when you usually bail on a project. And quite honestly, I'm usually the one who tends to be the voice of reason in these scenarios, as some of my colleagues in extralegal urban excursions take more of a "if you don't get caught every once in a while, you're not really trying hard enough" kind of attitude. But events earlier in the day had me feeling frustrated, antsy, and generally not in a cautious mood. So I said, "Fuck it, let's go."

Now "Fuck it, let's go" often leads to some great, great adventures. And 9 times out of 10, I'm glad I said that instead of "Fuck it, let's go home." But this time wasn't really one of them. We scampered up the archway at dusk, took a couple shots (seen above), and noticed flashlights. Well, when you have three guys hanging out in the middle of nowhere, a bunch of cops with nothing to do, and one of you leaves a tripod at the foot of the bridge, what do you expect?

It was easy enough to get away, we just crossed to the other side, navigated the gates (not on the Bronx side for some reason) and climbed out of High Bridge Park in Manhattan. It all would have been simple enough except for the fact that we had driven. We sent one guy home with all the camera equipment - at least we were smart enough to do that - and walked back to the park to pick up the car. Needless to say we encountered the police (well, State Park Police) as soon as we arrived.

General rules for dealing with police: be polite, say as little as possible, and deny everything. It also helps greatly if you're white, don't have anything illegal on you, don't have a Muslim sounding name, and basically look like the most plausible reason you're in a park in the middle of nowhere is to have gay sex, not to blow up a major transportation artery. I was glad as hell I'd shaved that morning. As soon as I heard "if I even find one stupid little joint on you..." when they were searching us I knew we were fine. A whole lot of being polite and saying as little as possible later, and we got in the car and got the hell out of there. One more bridge down!

The Bridges of New York County Part 4 - Through the High Bridge

There's more than one way to cross High Bridge. After the Aqueduct was abandoned for good, not much upkeep was done. Combined with a general disinvestment in the city, and especially in High Bridge Park, this led to the curious being able to make their way inside this old tunnel fairly easily. The abandoned part of the Aqueduct can be followed down the island of Manhattan from High Bridge until about 135th street. But that's another walk for another time.

If you enter in High Bridge Park in Manhattan and go the other way, you quickly get to the rusty iron tube that leads through the bridge. A gate chamber on either side makes for an interesting feature. The tube itself used to be inches thick iron - almost a century of neglect later you can see tiny dots of light from the holes and hear the rust crunch under your foot. It's thin enough to have a hole ripped out of it, allowing you to climb down a ladder and onto the catwalk underneath the main span.

From here you can go to the area seen above - the Bronx side being much longer than the Manhattan side, although bereft of the stubs of two original tubes you can see above (underneath the larger tube). All in all, this is one of the most historic and fascinating urban spaces in New York City. Until 2006 it was fairly simple to visit. That's when my buddy Steve decided to take New York Times Reporter Dan Barry to visit.

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection was already a little upset because of this article a bit before - upset enough to have the commissioner write a letter to the editor to the effect that people shouldn't be going into drains just for fun. So after the Times article we all got a nasty - but hardly unexpected - surprise when we found all entrances to the Aqueduct and High Bridge completely concreted up two days later. We learned a valuable lesson - always leave the authorities plausible deniability. A post or two on a random website or some photos on Flickr is very different from an article in the Paper of Record.

As of this post, the place is sealed up pretty good again. Still, I'd be surprised if I've had my last visit.