The bridge was designed by David B. Steinman, drawing upon his 1911 Ph.D. thesis in civil engineering at Columbia University. Named to commemorate the voyage of Henry Hudson on the Half Moon, which anchored near the site in 1609, it was the longest plate girder arch and fixed arch bridge in the world when it opened in 1936. The bridge now has two roadway levels carrying a total of seven traffic lanes and a pedestrian walkway and spans Spuyten Duyvil Creek just east of where the tidal strait meets the Hudson River. The bridge is part of the Henry Hudson Parkway, New York State Route 9A. To its west, at five feet above water level, is the Spuyten Duyvil Bridge, which is used by Amtrak trains to Albany, New York and other points north. The Spuyten Duyvil Metro-North station is under the Henry Hudson Bridge on the Bronx side.
History
A bridge at this location was proposed as early as 1906, but Spuyten Duyvil residents and other civic groups opposed the bridge, arguing that it would destroy the virgin forest of Inwood Hill Park and bring traffic congestion to Bronx communities. Robert Moses preferred the route along the Hudson River because he was able to receive the land to build the Henry Hudson Parkway at no cost and use federal labor to build the parkway. The construction of the bridge helped open the Riverdale neighborhood to development. The original single-deck structure was built for the Henry Hudson Parkway Authority by the American Bridge Company at a cost of $4.949 million and opened on December 12, 1936. The upper level of the bridge was designed to be added at a later date and opened to traffic on May 7, 1938. The second deck was added at an additional cost of about $2 million, after toll revenues allowed its construction. The bridge is owned by the City of New York and operated by the MTA Bridges and Tunnels, an affiliate agency of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. A rehabilitation project commenced in 2000 and was carried out by Steinman, Boynton, Gronquist and Birdsall, a successor firm of Robinson & Steinman, the firm that designed and engineered the bridge.
Tolls
, drivers pay $7.00 per car or $4.00 per motorcycle for tolls by mail. E‑ZPass users with transponders issued by the New York E‑ZPass Customer Service Center pay $2.80 per car or $1.91 per motorcycle. All E-ZPass users with transponders not issued by the New York E-ZPass CSC will be required to pay Toll-by-mail rates. The original toll was 10 cents. In January 2010, the MTA announced that it planned to implement a pilot program on the Henry Hudson Bridge to phase out toll booths and use open road tolling. On January 20, 2011, this toll pilot project got underway. Drivers without E-ZPass are sent a bill in the mail. The new tolling system was implemented on November 10, 2012, and has since been implemented on all nine MTA crossings. On November 20, 2016, the tollbooths were dismantled, as drivers were no longer able to pay cash at the bridge. Instead, cameras and E‑ZPass readers are mounted on new overhead gantries near where the booths were located. A vehicle without E-ZPass has a picture taken of its license plate and a bill for the toll is mailed to its owner. For E-ZPass users, sensors detect their transponders wirelessly.
