- So the Hell Gate Bridge was the first major bridge
that Ammann designed, but with Lindenthal,
he was working with Lindenthal.
His greatest arch bridge is actually the Bayonne Bridge,
and this was completed in 1931, it was actually a year
of records, structural records, and they all happened
in New York City, so the Bayonne Bridge,
the longest spanning arch, the George Washington Bridge,
right behind us, the longest spanning suspension bridge,
and the Empire State Building, the tallest building
in the world, all three were completed in 1931.
Right now, what we're gonna do is compare
the Bayonne Bridge to the Hell Gate Bridge.
So if you look at these two bridges side-by-side
we see that they are both arch bridges,
but they both are different, not only do they have
different spans, they have different aesthetics.
So if you compare the span of these two bridges
we see that the Bayonne Bridge, it's much longer
than the Hell Gate Bridge, actually the Bayonne Bridge
span is on the order of the Brooklyn Bridge span.
So those are different, because the Hell Gate Bridge
was designed for railroads, so it was designed
for 24 kips per foot.
One kip is 1,000 pounds, remember.
In comparison, the Bayonne Bridge was designed
for seven kips per foot, or 7,000 pounds per linear foot.
In that case, because they were designed
for different loads, how much the bridge
actually weighs was very different.
The Hell Gate was a much heavier bridge
than the Bayonne, despite the different span lengths.
And if we look at the arch, the Hell Gate Bridge has an arch
that deepens as it approaches the abutments,
while as the Bayonne, the arch stays the same,
it stays constant.
I talked about the abutments on the Hell Gate Bridge
and how they were unnecessary, and to be fair,
on the Bayonne Bridge, they also weren't necessary,
because, again, all the loads go down to the bottom cord
on the Bayonne Bridge as well.
But, Ammann isn't trying to deepen that
and try to make a different expression of the structure.
The Bayonne Bridge actually, the abutments, you see
a steel skeleton there, that was intended to be covered
in a stone facade, but because of the Depression at the time
they decided to leave that stone facade out,
but if we look at a sketch of what the Bayonne Bridge
was supposed to, or was intended to look like
when it was proposed to be designed,
we see those stone abutments there.
So now let's take a virtual drive across the Bayonne Bridge.
So here are some still images, we're gonna
scroll through them really quickly to give you
the sense of what it might feel like to drive
under the Bayonne Bridge.
So now we are approaching the bridge,
and we're getting closer and crossing,
and we're about mid-span, crossing, crossing,
and near the end.
So it's really a really nice drive and a very nice
experience to drive across the Bayonne Bridge.
Now we're gonna switch bridges and move on to
the George Washington Bridge, and we're gonna look at it
from the scientific, social, and symbolic aspect.