Octogenarian bridges need love, too.

Yesterday brought an announcement that the eighty-four-year-old Outerbridge Crossing and eighty-one-year-old Bayonne Bridge will get improvements in the next few years, and that the “functionally obsolete,” eighty-four-year-old Goethals Bridge will be replaced entirely with a new structure by 2018.

Before they resurface the roadway on the span named after Eugenius Harvey Outerbridge, raise the deck on Othmar Ammann and Cass Gilbert‘s arched beauty, and demolish the bridge perhaps most famous for its cameo in The Sopranos‘ opening credits, here’s my tribute to the trio.

Goethals Bridge

Goethals Bridge.
(photo: Dave Frieder.)

Named after General George Washington Goethals—child of Flemish immigrants, military officer, and civil engineer best known for his supervision of the Panama Canal’s construction—the Goethals Bridge was designed by John Alexander Low Waddell, and opened on June 29, 1928, after three years’ construction.

Undated postcard. Makes me think of Fitzgerald’s descriptions of Queens.
(photo: NYPL Digital Gallery.)

View from Staten Island, Historic American Engineering Record.
(photo: Library of Congress)

Below is the proposed design for the new bridge, with construction set to begin at the end of 2013. Among other things, the design promises to restore the pedestrian path.

Proposed new Goethals Bridge.
(photo: Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.)

For more on Goethals and the Port Authority’s proposal (including more snazzy renderings), click here.

Outerbridge Crossing

Outerbridge in the 1930s.
(photo: Ewing Galloway, NYPL Digital Gallery.)

Perhaps it’s not coincidental, after all, that the Goethals Bridge and Outerbridge Crossing look so similar: they shared a supervising engineer! Named after the first chairman of the Port of New York Authority (now PANYNJ), this bridge is the southernmost crossing in New York state. Opened on the same day as Goethals, a $15.3 million roadway resurfacing job will begin on Outerbridge soon.

Undated postcard (showing the wilds of Jersey?)
(photo: NYPL Digital Gallery.)

Detail, trusswork.
(photo: Dave Frieder.)

Bayonne Bridge

The “new” Bayonne Bridge, ca. 1930s. They used to give these out with cigarettes, kids!
(photo: NYPL Digital Gallery.)

The baby of the trio, the Bayonne Bridge was designed by dynamic duo Ammann and Gilbert, the same team who gave us the George Washington Bridge (which also opened the same year, in 1931). A National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark (on the same list as the Brooklyn Bridge, Washington Monument, Goodyear Airdock, and Hoover Dam), Bayonne currently presents a spatial problem for colossal cargo ships, exemplified in 2012, when a mast barely scraped by—er, under—the bridge. To better accommodate the growing number—and size—of these mammoth vessels (seen below), engineers will raise the Bridge’s roadway at a cost of $1.29 billion. —As long as aliens don’t destroy it again.

A common sight: cargo ship passes under the Bridge.
(photo: Library of Congress)

A vertiginous view of the pedestrian path. Photo by FS Lincoln.
(photo: NYPL Digital Gallery.)

Birds’-eye view over Staten Island.
(photo: Library of Congress.)

Pedestrian path view of the arch.
(photo: Library of Congress.)

Detail, arch trusswork, Historic American Engineering Record.
(photo: Library of Congress)

Suspender ropes, sockets, and rivets.
(photo: Dave Frieder.)

Concrete footings, Bayonne.
(photo: Library of Congress.)

The span, Historic American Engineering Record.
(photo: Library of Congress.)

View from Staten Island, ca. 1960s?
(photo: Library of Congress)

As always, SBS will bring you updates on these bridges as their stories develop, no matter how people choose to pronounce “Goethals” … or if they rename it, for that matter.