Can you name this bridge?
PHOTOS: New Jersey State Archives, Department of State
Need a hint?
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It was completed in 1940
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It carries over 82,000 vehicles per day
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It was named after a famous inventor
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It’s the Edison Bridge over the Raritan River. These days you can see it as you travel over the Garden State Parkway’s Driscoll Bridge.
Why was it built? Because this is what summertime shore traffic looked like in the 1930s over the nearby Victory Bridge:
Here’s some interesting facts
“The Thomas A. Edison Bridge is an important example of a very large and early continuous deck plate girder highway bridge. It was the largest, highest, and longest span bridge of its type in the United States when completed. Its erection by the Bethlehem Steel Company involved the lifting of the world’s longest (260′) and heaviest (198 tons) girder to a height of 135′. Morris Goodkind made important contributions to twentieth-century highway bridge engineering.”
– US Library of Congress
When originally built, it contained over 65,000 cubic yards of masonry, 2,500,000 or reinforcing steel, and 19,000,000 pounds of structural steel.
Click here for more information about the history and technology of the Edison Bridge.
