for over two centuries New York welcomed masses into the country but what's often overlooked is
the confusing nature of the waterways surrounding Manhattan and Long Island Sound you see when the
city was first developing as a port and Trade Center one area of the surrounding waterways
stood out tremendously presenting unimaginable challenges and even dangers the Hell Gate today we
discover its solution the Hellgate bridge I'm your host Ryan silkash and you're watching it's history
before we get started today I have an exciting announcement thanks to our sponsor established
titles I officially became a Lord and you can too let me explain established titles is a
Project based on a historic Scottish custom where landowners are referred to as Lords and Ladies we
allow people to buy as little as one square foot of dedicated land so that they can call themselves
a lord or lady you will receive a certificate complete with a unique plot Number which gives
you the exact location of your land and it makes a great last minute gift if you'd like to make
someone else into a lady or Lord so this is a fun novel way to help preserve Scotland's picturesque
Woodland and biodiversity while supporting Global forestation efforts we plant a tree
with every order and work with global Charities one tree planted and trees for the future to
support Global reforestation efforts what's more many documents actually allow you to change your
title to lady or Lord which guarantees you the status that you deserve you could officially
include the title Lord or lady on your credit card slash plane tickets slash dating profiles Etc it
makes a great last minute gift so if you'd like to become a lord as well I've got a great deal
for you the first 200 people purchasing a title pack using MyLink will effectively be next to
my plot within a few minutes of walking distance depending on how many of you want to become a lord
or lady we can build our own little its history Kingdom established titles is actually running a
massive Black Friday sale right now plus if you use the code it's history you get an additional
10 off go to establishtitles.com it's history to get your gifts now and help support the channel
sandwich between Manhattan and queens are Randalls Wards and Blackwell's Islands when the city was
still young to move from Ward's Island to the Bronx or Manhattan meant to either taking a
long roundabout trip to Randall's Island then to the Bronx and eventually Manhattan or Queens
the only alternative was to cross the Hell Gate itself which was a major issue you see the Hell
Gate is a unique Junction of the Hudson River New York Upper Bay and Long Island Sound the
area is permanently cursed by churning Tides too hazardous for regular small River gone
crafts before the normalization of motorboats and ferries Crossing even from Ward's Island
to the Bronx was treacherous the name was originally coined by Dutchman Adrian Block
in 1614 when he crossed the street for the first time between his time and the eventual
construction of the Hellgate Bridge little changed in the passages aggressive content
many ships and lives were claimed by the passageway some sources claimed that by the 1850s
one out of 50 vessels sank or grounded themselves in the strait by the end of the decade it was an
annual average of a thousand ships running aground in the passageway in fact even a royal Navy ship
the hussar sank in the strait during the American Revolution with almost the entire Imperial Army's
payroll still aboard another victim in 1904 was the steamship General Slocum which burned and
sank in the Waterway with over a thousand passengers who could not escape the Raging
fires and treacherous Tides so brought on by the endless chain of inconveniences and disasters and
the simple economic pragmatism of the day the Pennsylvania Railroad Company who owned most
of these significant lesser railroad companies in New York began their efforts to finally Bridge the
Hell Gate you see moving cars by roll-on roll-off ferries was 2 labor and time intensive not to
mention it was economically inefficient given the narrowness of the strait it simply wasn't
practical on the other hand moving trains the long way over the much narrower Bridges to Randall's
Island and then the Bronx was equally inefficient given the extensive detour then required to reach
Queens hence construction began in 1912 on the first bridge to cross the strait engineer
Oliver Barnes and designer Gustav lindenthal were commissioned by the train head of prr Alexander
Casa for the job Cassatt had many Ambitions for his company having come out of retirement to
assume the chairmanship in his tenure the company designed and began work on the Hudson and East
River tunnels that would connect Manhattan to the grid but to connect the smaller Island was
another adventure entirely lindenthal seemed like an odd choice for the job born Austrian
he had no formal education in architecture or railroad engineering he was forced to immigrate
to the U.S say for the sake of advancing his career despite his poor English his background
building railroads throughout the Austrian Empire and Switzerland helped him land a job with the
Keystone company in Pittsburgh where he would carry out a successful number of projects after
his tenure there he founded his own consulting firm and finished another four bridges in his role
he began his relationship with prr discussing the feasibility of railroad Bridges across the Hudson
and East River before the tunnels were formally decided upon instead while the bridges weren't
favorable for those projects they perfectly suited the Hell Gate lindenthal envisioned a
towering suspension bridge to match with the much larger Bridges along the Riverway on top of his
engineering Talent he was an art lover at heart and he yearned to create something breathtaking
this was overruled by Cassatt who with the rest of the company ordered a much more practical Bowen
string Trussel design part of the tensions came down out to settling complications for competing
designs considering that Ward's Island was the site of a statemental Asylum and the railroad
had to have a long curved turn to go around the property it was suggested although difficult to
verify that the steel Towers at both ends of the bridge might have helped to prevent the interned
from escaping on top of the navigational needs the boat trust required the least steal out of
the three proposed designs so designers with the support of over 90 other Engineers set out
to work the chief assistant engineer othmor Amman would later go on to build the absolutely Titanic
George Washington and Verrazano Nero's Bridges and if you'd like to see videos on those two projects
let me know by hitting the Subscribe button anyhow he later described the bridge and the significance
given to it by his mentor lindenthalm as quote a Monumental portal for the Steamers that entered
New York Harbor from Long Island Sound he also realized that this bridge forming a conspicuous
object that can be seen from both shores of the river and from almost every elevated point in
the city should be an impressive structure the arch flanked by Massive masonry Towers was most
favorably adopted to that purpose stating quote a great bridge in a great City although primarily
utilitarian and purpose should nevertheless be a work of art to which science lends its Aid in
elaborate stress sheet worked out on a purely economic and scientific basis does not make a
great bridge it is only with a broad sense for beauty and Harmony coupled with wide experience
in the scientific and Technical fields that a Monumental Bridge can be created fortunately
the Hellgate Bridge was evolved under such conditions and therefore may be said to be
one of the finest creations of engineering art of great size that this country has ever produced
by the end of construction in 1917 the entire length of the new railroad was 16 900 feet or 3.2
miles from where the tracks met previously laid lines in Queens however the bridge as it stands
over the Waterway is much smaller at 1107 feet nonetheless at the time it was the longest steel
arched bridge in the world using twenty thousand tons of steel beams overall in fact it has become
the first bridge in the world to use carbon steel giving it a much stronger Integrity proportional
to its weight it became the inspiration for sister bridges in the UK and Australia however
this achievement was suppressed by the offense of the first world war just as was the opening
of the Panama Canal in 1914 lindenthal and his team created a technically marvelous Bridge using
construction methods and safety tests either still in development or that they had created themselves
however Alexander casat would not see the project completed he died of heart failure in 1906 before
the construction had even begun he missed a lot he would never see the Hudson and East River
tunnels or that Hellgate Bridge his death was not an isolated incident apparently he was one
of the company's many presidents to die from the stress of their work and perhaps he had seen it
coming when he temporarily retired the legacy of these tunnels and Bridge however would far outlive
any other project he saw through as president of the company now connecting the Pennsylvania
and New Haven Railways the Hell Gate Bridge was an absolutely vital link for commercial and passenger
trains crossing from New York to New England seeing thousands of trains every year it was
in fact so vital to American industry and travel that 1942 after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the
Nazi declaration of war against the United States German saboteurs leapt into operation Pastorius
in this operation the sabotage operation meant to disrupt the 9 Falls hydraulic power plant aluminum
factories across the upper east coast and to generally create an air of Terra across the
country the German military intelligence landed two teams of four saboteurs on the East Coast
departing u-584 the first team was instructed to destroy the Hellgate bridge and contaminate
or destroy the New York City water treatment facilities as well as bomb Jewish owned stores
and plant explosives in the locker rooms of city train stations simply for the value of random
Terror an awfully big task for only four men of Civilian backgrounds with little training to
accomplish their mission this plan unraveled fast as the first team landed in Florida not New York
963 miles away from their objectives and even if they had been closer the other team leader
had immediately alerted the U.S Coast Guard after they had landed getting their submarines spotted
and their multiple crates of explosives quickly discovered was lost and the FBI was on the case
before the sun was up by one o'clock the next day the team was standing in front of a small army of
police Coast Guards and federal investigators kicking off the biggest Manhunt in FBI history
up to that point the team split up in Jacksonville having no idea that the mission was irreplaceably
compromised and two of the agents that actually landed in New York were already cooperating with
the FBI the FBI was keeping the lid completely sealed no information would be announced until
all eight of the men were in federal custody within a couple of days all the men were arrested
and the threats were all effectively eliminated so with such a seasoned history what remains of that
great bridge today unfortunately time has not been favorable to the Hellgate Bridge you see after the
end of World War II and the increasing presence of automobiles in New York fewer trains were required
for passengers going between the boroughs with the same applying to freight trains lindenthal
had actually foreseen this and after the Bridge's completion proposed adding lanes for automobiles
but while these plans were initially tempting they never went into construction the bridge
has seen a continually degrading level of freight and Passenger cars every year in 1968 Pennsylvania
Railroad and New York Central Railroad were ordered by the government to merge into one
company in an effort to save both nevertheless the dwindling returns meant this measure only lasted
two years after which the Hellgate Bridge was effectively sold to Amtrak during Amtrak's time
with the bridge it was decided the fourth rail line was no longer needed as traffic had simply
dropped so much that the bridge had too many lanes open for each to properly be used hence in 1976
Conrail made a deal with Amtrak to share control of the bridge to boost traffic in all categories
this increasing level of complication and just who controlled how much of the bridge meant its
overall maintenance deteriorated by the late 1980s a severe refurbishment was necessary and for that
New York could thank Senator Patrick Moynihan being from the area himself Moynihan looked at
the bridge with the same level of awe that its creators had so 1991 he convinced the Congress
to allocate 55 million dollars in restoration funds for the Hellgate Bridge as a part of
the refurbishment Amtrak ordered a new style of protective paint however a flaw in the production
chain meant the paint faded faster than expected in the dull red color was renamed Hellgate red
Amtrak for their part recognized the attention the new color attracted and chose to keep it in
perpetuity this refurbishment fund didn't cover everything however according to Antonio Milani
it was not given its due safety concerns still linger with the bridge while the overall structure
is sound for possibly hundreds of years with or without human maintenance more minor components
such as the bridges electronics for train controls are an issue additional concerns include
Lighting on and around the bridge regarding the safety of boaters and Pilots lost in the night
the Hellgate Bridge is a modern Marvel sitting in the background of a great City at one point
it was the longest steel Arch Bridge in existence and although now its ranking has
changed significantly it's still the seventh longest bridge of its type anywhere on Earth
in its time it carried an incalculable amount of passengers and Freight through the vast artery
of America's largest city its critical flaw is its existence focusing purely on rail traffic
in a time when trucks have taken over the world and we'll leave it there for you today thank you
all for watching hit that subscribe button DM me your episode ideas on Insta and don't miss
our video about Bolivia's Great Train Cemetery until next time this is Ryan silkash signing off