Five hundred years ago, in a mission to find the Northwest Passage to Asia, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazano sailed along the northeastern coast of North America. He voyaged from present day North Carolina, to Nova Scotia, and became the first European known to have sailed into New York Harbor. 

More recently, on November 21, 1964, the Verrazano-Narrow Bridge, named in honor of the explorer, opened to traffic. New Yorkers like to describe features of their city as the tallest, the biggest, etc., but the Verrazano bridge is truly the embodiment of superlatives. The 693-foot towers are so tall that they are 1-5/8 inches farther apart at the top than the bottom because the 4,260-foot distance between them made it necessary to take the earth’s curvature into account. When completed in 1964 it was longest suspension bridge in the world. There is enough steel in the structure to build three Empire State Buildings. The wire in the four main cables would encircle the earth nearly six times.

Researchers will learn these facts, and many more, from resources in the Municipal Library. The vertical files, for example, contain an eclectic assortment of source materials. One such item, the Winter 2001-2002 edition of From the Archive, a publication of MTA Bridges and Tunnels, is especially informative and includes numerous historical photographs documenting construction of the bridge. According to the narrative, New York State authorized construction of a bridge across the narrows between Staten Island and Brooklyn in 1946. Nine years later, the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA), together with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, announced a proposal to build a 12-lane double deck suspension bridge. Ground was broken on August 13, 1959, and the $320 million structure opened to traffic on November 21, 1964.

It should come as no surprise that master builder Robert Moses played a significant role in planning and construction of the bridge. As Chairman of the TBTA (now MTA Bridges and Tunnels), Moses saw the Verrazano as the last of the suspension bridges needed to complete his web of arterial highways connecting the five Boroughs with each other and the mainland.

The vertical file contains a small pamphlet titled, “Remarks of Robert Moses . . . at the Cable Spinning Ceremony at the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge Thursday, March 7, 1964.”  In a short speech transcribed in the pamphlet, Moses said of the bridge, “You see here the buckle in the chain of metropolitan arterials devised and approved by federal, state and local agencies, departments and officials too numerous to mention individually, a framework of bypasses and through routes of the most modern design which still requires years to finish.”  In a not very subtle allusion to the considerable opposition voiced by residents of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, whose homes were demolished to make way for the bridge, Moses went on to say, “The obstacles in our way become more formidable, the opposition more vociferous, the support less steady and certain, the courage or, if you please, obstinacy of those in charge less durable and the cost immeasurably greater as time goes on.”

Moses persevered, as he did, and the bridge was completed just a few months later. According to clippings from the Staten Island Advance, “The day dawned blustery and cold, but no dampers were put on the spirit of the Verrazano-Narrows bridge opening...”  (November 23, 1964.)  Other Advance stories reported how the cold weather discouraged politicians from making long-winded speeches. Spectators cheered Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s announcement that “I think I’ll file my speech for the record.”  

Reading through the chronologically arranged vertical file, an article dated March 3, 1962, from the World-Telegram, hints at stories that would dominate later coverage: “Staten Island: Goodbye to a Way of Life—Verrazano Bridge, Now Building, Will Double Population, End Rural Refuge.” Indeed, clippings from 1984, on the occasion of the bridge’s twentieth anniversary, echo the earlier prediction: “The Bridge took a toll on the Island’s mores,” headlined the Advance on November 18, 1984.

During the 1980s and 90s, stories about the bridge tolls proliferate in the clipping files. On June 22, 1983, The New York Times reported “New Law Gives S.I. Drivers a 25-cent Discount on Verrazano.” And beginning in 1970, thanks to the annual New York marathon that kicks off on the Verrazano Bridge on the first Sunday in November, the great suspension bridge always receives lots of media attention. 

Searching Municipal Library shelves revealed an illustrated pamphlet, Giovanni da Verrazzano, The Discoverer of New York Bay. Published in 1964, on the occasion of the inauguration of the bridge, it chronicles the life and history of the explorer. According to the introduction, “Here we wish to . . . help awaken interest in the daring, adventurous nobleman who gave New York its very first name of Angouleme, recorded its exact position on a map, and opened the path to the other voyagers who have come to these shores in ever-growing numbers from then on. Meet Giovanni da Verrazzano, the discoverer of New York Bay!” What the pamphlet apparently fails to mention is that he is believed to have been eaten by cannibals in the West Indies, according to the Encyclopedia of New York City. But there is a bronze statue of Verrazano in Battery Park and a beautiful suspension bridge to remind New Yorkers of his place in our history.