How in New York they blew up the Kosciuszko bridge

While I was in Toronto, New York lost one of its old bridges. The explosion thundered early Sunday morning, disrupting the rest of the day. He destroyed the historic Kosciuszko Bridge that connected Brooklyn to Queens since 1939. Just do not worry - this explosion was not another terrorist attack that so often flashed recently in news releases. Just this bridge was thus demolished in order to make way for a new one.

But it looked pretty impressive anyway. Here's the video - everything happens pretty quickly (an explosion somewhere in the 13th second of the video):

It's no secret that I consider New York bridges to be one of our main attractions. The old iron bridge was not even close to the most beautiful in the city, but for almost 80 years it has been part of the architectural face of the Green Point district. Here, many years ago, Polish immigrants began to settle - this is a kind of Brighton for the Poles.

The bridge got its name in honor of the Pole Tadeusz Kosciuszko, who at the end of the eighteenth century was the national hero of the USA and the Commonwealth (an interesting combination, isn’t it?) In the 1770s, sympathy for the colonists of North America pushed Kosciuszko to go to the New World to accept there participation in the war for US independence. Basically, he was an engineer - he planned and built military fortifications. In the army of a young country, he received the rank of brigadier general.

After the victory of the Americans, Kosciuszko returned to his homeland, where he participated in Polish uprisings against the Russian government. He was captured, but was pardoned after the death of Catherine II, after which he returned to live in the United States.

The bridge across Newton Creek, a small sleeve of water separating Brooklyn and Queens, was named after Kosciuszko a year after opening, in 1940. In Europe, the Second World War had already begun, the territory of Poland was occupied by German and Soviet troops, and the United States was still neutral. To enlist the support of the Polish Greenpoint community, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia dedicated a new bridge to a Polish-American hero from the past, declaring at the dedication ceremony that Poland would be free.

In the process, the bridge became part of the US national road system, and it turned out that it was heavily overloaded: designed for 10,000 cars a day, Kosciuszko Bridge passed 18 times more traffic on peak days. Because of this, constant traffic jams were created in the surrounding streets. And so the authorities decided to replace this bridge with as many as two new ones!

The construction of the first of them began immediately next to the old in 2014. Gradually, a brand new clean bridge grew next to an old dirty piece of iron.

In April of this year, a new bridge was opened. This was a big event - the last major bridge in New York opened in 1964 - it was the elegant Verrazano-Narrows Bridge leading to Staten Island. That is, in the city of bridges, it was the first new bridge in more than half a century! For the sake of such an event, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo rode across the new bridge in a vintage convertible.

So far, the new bridge has been opened in both directions, but plans to erect a second bridge of the same type next to it. In the future, each of them will work in only one direction.

But in order to build a second new bridge, you must first do something with the old one. Therefore, they decided to blow it up! At first they thought that they would explode right away - many New Yorkers really hoped for such an option - well, how often do you happen to see a bridge blast? But the authorities decided that too much rubbish would end up in the water.

Therefore, from April, the old bridge was gradually dismantled. The main section of the road, for example, was taken out on cargo barges (it took two connected together).

But the remains of the bridge still decided to blow up. Firstly, it’s easier, and secondly, they nevertheless provided the people with the desired sight! And so, early in the morning on Sunday, October 1, an explosion occurred at Greenpoint, and the remaining pieces of the old Kosciuszko bridge (except for the supports) collapsed to the ground.

Soon, the second of the new bridges will begin to be built on this site, but for now, the builders are dismantling the wreckage of the bridge named after the Polish-American hero of the 1700s.