History and Aesthetics of the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge

Abstract

This paper is a study of the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge. Othmar Ammann’s bridge, completed in 1939, has strong similarities to the ill-fated Tacoma Narrows, sharing many structural characteristics. While the New York bridge has served well for two-thirds of a century, the deck has oscillated noticeably for most of its lifetime; in attempts to calm these motions, the Whitestone has undergone an unusual number of retrofits—in 1940, 1946, 1988, and a new retrofit begun in 2003. From a historical perspective, these retrofits have kept pace with the development of suspension bridge technology, each representing the state of the art at the time they were implemented. We can therefore view the Whitestone as a valuable physical record of developments in the profession’s understanding of structural vibrations and aerodynamics. The goal of this paper is to place these retrofits in context, as well as to evaluate them on technical and aesthetic levels.