Hell Gate, 1915-1920.

New York Connecting Railroad, Hell Gate Bridge, Spanning East River, Wards Island & Astoria, date post 1968.

Hell Gate Bridge being constructed, ca.1916.

Hell Gate Bridge, 1916. The Hell Gate Bridge is named for the narrow and often rough waters of the tidal strait in the East River that it traverses. The bridge is officially known as the New York Connecting Railroad Bridge. Designed by civic engineer Gustav Lindenthal (who was also involved in the construction of the Manhattan, Williamsburg and Queensboro Bridges) the bridge is actually three bridges that connect Astoria to Wards Island and Randalls Island and those islands to the mainland. The largest of the crossings is the steel through arch bridge over the East River. The railroad-only bridge saw its first train crossing on March 9, 1917, opening up an important rail connection between Long Island, Manhattan, the Bronx, and New England. This new connection made passenger travel along the busy Northeast Rail Corridor a more direct and easy journey. It also vastly improved the movement of freight as the only direct rail freight link between Long Island and the mainland. It was the world's longest steel arch bridge until the Bayonne Bridge opened in 1931, and it inspired the builders of Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia and the Tyne Bridge in England.

"When the Dutch finally ceded New Netherlands to the English in 1674, they left behind a legacy of place names—'toponyms,' to use the technical term. The English, whether to avoid confusion or from lack of interest, kept many, though often in Anglicized form. Thus Breuckelen became 'Brooklyn,' Vlissingen became 'Flushing,' the Bouwerij became the 'Bowery,' and so on. Of all these descendant names, one stands out as particularly forbidding, and the ambiguity of its true meaning has invited all kinds of mythical associations and claptrap. This is 'Hell Gate,' which denotes the churlish stretch of the East River between Manhattan and Astoria, Queens, at the nexus of the 'Y' formed by the East River to the south and to the northeast and the Harlem River to the northwest..." For more on Hell Gate, check out this article by Michael Nichols in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.

Hell Gate, explosion removing Flood Rock, ca. 1880. Hell Gate is a narrow tidal strait in the East River between Astoria, Queens and Randall's and Wards Islands. The waterway had a long history as a dangerous passage; large rocks and whirlpools caused by the convergence of converging tide-driven currents made the strait treacherous and resulted in hundreds of wrecks. Beginning in the 1850s and continuing intermittently for decades, the Army Corps of Engineers used explosions in an attempt to clear the channel and make it more safely passable. The largest of these explosion efforts came in 1885 when 300,000 pounds of munitions were set off to destroy the small island called Flood Rock. Flood Rock had been considered the most dangerous feature of the strait. The explosions, likely pictured here, created a geyser 250 feet tall and were felt as far away as Princeton, New Jersey. Despite these efforts, disasters in the Hell Gate would not completely end. In 1904 the steamship General Slocum caught fire while heading though the strait on its way to picnic grounds on Long Island. Scared and desperate passengers jumped into the river to escape the flames. The ship eventually beached on North Brother Island, just above the straight. The total loss of life was more than 1000 members of the German community of the Lower East Side, mostly women and children.

When it opened in 1916, the Hell Gate Bridge (more properly titled the New York Connecting Railroad Bridge) was the longest, heaviest, strongest steel arch bridge in the world and the only four-track long-span railroad bridge ever built. Its stunning profile combines the slightly reversed curve of its upper arc with granite-faced Roman arch towers. Stretching from the Sunnyside Railroad Yards in Queens across the turbulent confluence of the Harlem and East Rivers and Long Island Sound known as Hell Gate, to Ward's Island, on across the Little Hell Gate to Randalls Island and then over the Bronx Kill to The Bronx, the bridge was built to complete the linkage of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad system with the Pennsylvania Railroad system via the Pennsylvania Railroad tunnel under the Hudson River. Together, tunnel and bridge created an all-rail route over the Bronx Kill to The Bronx and replaced the time-consuming and expensive water link for New York and New England bound passengers and freight from the south. The Hell Gate bridge marks the apogee of American railroad power and prosperity. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the neighborhood that took its name from Hell Gate had been a pastoral area of summer homes and farms, but by 1912, when work began on the Hell Gate bridge, the river's edge had begun its conversion to an industrial area. Today the area is a mix of residential and commercial usage.