LINK Bridge spans Hudson River's narrowest stretch.

The bridge's 3,500-span center span was almost twice as long as the largest existing bridges. Its eight-lane highway deck and provision for addition below of a four-track rapid transit deck were far beyond anything conceived elsewhere in the world.

The bridge had an All-Star design team headed by O. H. Ammann and including Allston Dana, who shared with Ammann the design of the Bayonne Arch Bridge, the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge and the Triborough Bridge. The board of consultants included George Goethals, Leon Moissieff, Gustav Lindenthal, Joseph B. Strauss, Ole Singstad and architect Cass Gilbert.

Planning began in 1926. Construction began in 1927 and the bridge opened to traffic in October 1931 (ENR 10/22/31 p. 640).

The problem of approaches was easy. The bridge had to have a clearance of at least 200 ft. On the west end, at Fort Lee, was a 225-ft-high rock cliff. On New York side, the approach was at the city's highest point, which also was the river's narrowest point.

The bridge was designed for two forms of suspension--wire cables and eyebar cables. John A. Roebling's Sons Corp., Trenton, N.J., made the low bid for spun wire cables.

Four 36-in.-dia cables support the deck of the bridge. Two on each side are 9 ft apart. The four cables are made up of 105,896 wires with a total length of 101,000 miles.

On the New York side, the cables are anchored by a 260,000-ton mass of concrete and granite masonry that is 290 ft long, 200 ft wide and 130 ft high. On the New Jersey side, the cables are attached to eyebar chains that are anchored in concrete in tunnels extending 150 ft deep into the solid rock of the Palisades.

Unlike previous suspension bridges, the George Washington had no stiffener truss. It was assumed that its great length, its heavy cables and the weight of the roadway would provide stability.

On most previous suspension bridges the towers had been designed as steel frames or bents, fixed at the base and flexible enough to take bending from unequal cable pulls. The designers of the George Washington decided flexibility was not needed. Each of the 566-ft-high towers is made up of four rigidly connected frames. Despite the bridge's dominating length, its 3,500-ft center span would be surpassed in only six years by the 4,200-ft span length of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

NEWS IN BRIEF 1931-1935

Lay-Off at Hoover Dam
(Aug. 13, 1931 p. 271)--An Aug. 7 strike by workmen demanding a minimum wage of $5 a day prompted Hoover Dam constructor The Six Companies Inc. to lay off 1,400 workers and suspend work on the main dam just as completion was near. But the contract was ahead of schedule, and officials said the shutdown would not delay the project. Work on subcontracts continued. Strikers demanded a $5 minimum wage, $5.50 a day for tunnel work, $6 for miners and better housing. All requests were firmly turned down. There was speculation that the contractor preferred to suspend work due to average temperatures of 120°F.

Unity in Hard Times
(Feb. 4, 1932 p. 180)--Contractors have been hit severely by the depression. A decrease in work intensified the ferocity of price competition. Profit margins have been wiped. Finances have been tied up in closed banks. Assets have been depreciated. Irresponsible firms that operated on false credit during boom times have been eliminated from the field, but the breakdown of credit hit responsible firms as well. One outstanding result of the situation, however, was to cause general contractors to come closer together in their national association.

Safety Leads to Divided Highways
(Jan. 17, 1935, p. 104)--Highway engineers observed that "accidents still continued to happen in spite of everything" they had done. There was no indication that the limit in motor-vehicle speeds had been or would soon be reached. Pioneers of road safety saw the need for separate roadways for vehicles moving in different directions, or where this is for the time being "impracticable, separation in time may be achieved by means of traffic signals." It was not foreseen, engineers reported, that wider, straighter highways--the very improvements that should be made for safety--would also encourage an even more rapid development of high-speed motor vehicles.