It was a bright and sunny late Tuesday morning, July 2, as federal, state and local officials gathered for a noon ceremony on the Kingston side of the Rondout Creek highway suspension bridge known to locals as the Wurts Street Bridge. The arrival of lieutenant governor Antonio Delgado’s black SUV was the signal to start the event.
Under the hot sun, Kingston police officers directed traffic. A large crowd gathered before the suspension bridge to listen to speeches, watch the ribbon-cutting ceremony, and — most exciting of all — to walk out on the pedestrian walkways high above the Rondout Creek between Kingston and Port Ewen for the first time in 34 months.
The cast of notables included Ulster County executive Jen Metzger, Esopus supervisor Danielle Freer, state senator Michelle Hinchey, DOT commissioner Marie Therese Dominguez, congressmember Pat Ryan, Kingston mayor Steve Noble, DOT regional director Lance McMillian, plus an assortment of alders and legislators. Also in attendance was the man who could perhaps take more credit than anyone else for the bridge’s restoration to its former glory, former assemblymember Kevin Cahill.
State officials spoke about the importance of the structure and its future.
One can build up quite a bit of speed bombing down the hill on a beach cruiser towards the Rondout Creek on Wurts Street from the flat intersection of Spring and Wurts. At the bottom, if the street light at Abeel Street is in your favor, then you can use all that velocity you’ve built up to streak across the intersection and launch up the approach onto the concrete deck of the Rondout Creek highway suspension bridge.
Because the south end of the bridge 1145 linear feet away in Port Ewen is 18 feet higher than its north end in Kingston, the span has a discernible upward arc.
“You see the hump in it? Suspension bridges are usually flat,” explained Ward 8 alder Bob Dennison, formerly chief engineer for the Department of Transportation (DOT). “Because as it expands and contracts with temperature, you have joints to relieve that pressure. Well, when it’s curved like this, when it’s not flat, it rests in the joint all the time.”
In an article in The Engineering News Record when the bridge was first completed in September 1922, authors W. E. Joyce and M. Bebarfald called the bridge “the most important suspension bridge for highway service built under the modern state highway construction system.”
The writers complained that the pre-existing method for crossing the creek, a chain-driven ferryboat named the Skillypot, was “antiquated” and gave “unsatisfactory service.” It was the final link which would allow a motorist or a horse-drawn carriage to travel uninterrupted on the west bank of the Hudson River all the way to Albany from Fort Lee, New Jersey.
The span continued to serve this purpose until the four-lane John T. Loughran girder bridge was built less than a quarter-mile to the west in 1979. With just minor maintenance performed for the next 60 years, the suspension bridge fell into disrepair, the paint badly flaking, the metal rusting.
In August 2021, the DOT awarded a rehabilitation contract to Wurts Street Bridge, LLC, a private-sector company. “Wurts Street Bridge” is what the locals call the Rondout Creek suspension span.
When the rehabilitation of the bridge officially began in October 2021, the Department of Transportation expected the estimated substantial completion date — the day the vehicles and pedestrians of the public would have full and unrestricted use and benefit of the facilities — to be October 1, 2023.
At the time the contract was awarded, the cost to rehabilitate the bridge — a new deck, guide rails, sidewalks, railings, suspender cables, anchors and a paint job — was estimated to be $70,000 shy of $45 million. To pay for the rehab, $37 million in state funds was originally secured by former assemblymember Kevin Cahill, with the DOT making up the difference.
The price tag has jumped to $57.1 million. Dennison expects the private contractor’s $12.2-million overage to be chalked up to supply-chain issues.
Public Information Officer for the Department of Transportation Heather Pillsworth has confirmed that the additional amount will be covered by federal funds.
While WBC did the sidewalk and the bridge repairs, the steel repairs and the rope repairs went to numerous subcontractors hired by WBC. The electrical components were completed by the Verde Electrical Company. Ahern Painting Contractors painted the bridge. GPI was hired to oversee the inspection of the work, and consultants Modjeski and Masters performed the design of the rehab.
A bridge worker leery of being identified in this article said that he was told the project would probably take six to eight months when he signed on.
“It’s a year and a half now,” the worker laughed. “But it’s fine. It’s a lovely job.”
“On a closed bridge,” observed Dennison, “you can do what you have to do without having to worry about getting hit by a car. It makes it safer for everybody, and you get a better quality. That’s the best part about it.”
The worker smiled. “I don’t miss the I-84 and I-684 [highways] at all.”
Just as many airline pilots first learn their craft in the military, many engineers and construction workers toiling in the private sector start out in the public sector. “Everybody does it,” said the worker. “It’s routine.”
Dennison agreed. “Retire at 55,” said Dennison, “and then go to work.”
“The good news,” added Dennison regarding the extra ten months the job took, “is that it was a labor agreement project. Meaning people got fair wages.”
State law requires that state contracts pay prevailing wage, and the Rondout Creek Bridge is owned — bolt, rivet and lime — by the DOT.
“A job like this, you know, union ironworks, you want people to know what they’re doing,” said Dennison. “You want to know they’re trained. You want to know they’re capable. You want to know they understand safety. There’s going to be a bridge in 20 years from now when everyone’s forgotten everything that was done here. You want people to know what they’re doing.”
The Rondout Creek Bridge is the only suspension bridge that the DOT owns in New York State.
“We don’t like suspension bridges,” asserted Dennison. “The Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, Williamsburg Bridge, all those [suspension bridges] they’re owned by [New York City]. We did get involved in them when the city was not doing their job, years ago. The city was struggling to get them updated and organized, so the state came in and helped finish them up. But the DOT’s ownership and DOT’s participation are two different things. We built the first Thruway. We built the Tappan Zee Bridge.”
“You got a bevy of information right here,” said the bridge worker, indicating Dennison.
That some residents along Wurts Street have expressed trepidation regarding increased tractor-trailer traffic detouring over from Route 9W, doesn’t make sense to Dennison.
“The big rigs are not going to be able to use this bridge. It’s a 20-ton limit. The 9W is wider, it’s safer. Why take the risk? Even when this was open six, seven years ago, it was never really a thoroughfare. Think about it. You have a big rig. You just come across here and go up that hill. And make that right turn. I mean, unless you want to torture yourself, it really just doesn’t make any sense. It’s kind of a nuisance.”
“You’re going to have a lot of traffic, I assume, the first month,” the worker interjected. “More interest in it.”
“I think you’re going to get local deliveries from restaurants,” replied Dennison. “I can see that.”
The Rondout Creek suspension bridge is a marvel of suspended-engineering architecture. Main cables almost ten inches thick and comprised of 278 twisted steel wires are anchored into the earth at either end of the span. In between, they run up and over two 152-feet-tall steel towers that rest on piers of concrete.
Steel ropes attached to the draped cable are fastened to the truss of the bridge, holding it all there 85 feet above the waters of the creek heading out to the Hudson River. Any load the deck of the bridge experiences is transferred up the steel ropes and then along the main cables back into the earth. Et viola. Suspension.
“Those cables suspend the bridge,” said Dennison. “The towers carry the suspension cable and allow it to carry the live load. Dead load is the structure. Live load is the trucks or whatever drives on it. The cables carry the truss, which carries floor beams, which carry the deck.”
“This big cable that comes down, it has a lot of load on it, so what do you do with it?” Dennison asked. He points to the answer, concrete structures into which the suspension cable disappears. “You build an anchor which goes into the ground, a big concrete thing, and it has eye-bars that stick out that the cables tie to.”
Eye-bars are straight lengths of steel with a hole, called an eye, at each end. The anchor pits are shafts cut 60 feet deep into the rock, six feet in diameter, widening out at the bottom to a chamber 14 feet wide. The eye-bars are embedded in the concrete poured into the shafts.
“Part of our problem was, and this has been replaced, the eye-bars here were starting to rust at where it went into the concrete,” Dennison said. “It was difficult to figure out how much was left without actually digging into the concrete. It’s old steel. So what happened? We downposted it.”
Sperry Co, a woman-owned and woman-run specialty subcontractor, handled part of the anchorage eye-bar rehabilitation, working on site from 2021 to 2022 installing six new permanent rock anchors, varying from 50 to 90 feet in length, at each of the four corners of the bridge, called vaults, totaling 24 production anchors and two test anchors.
The governor’s office said the chambers, where the main cables are anchored, would be rebuilt with state-of-the-art climate control systems to control moisture and ensure the anchorages remain free from corrosion. Additionally, the control systems will be enabled with remote monitoring and operation.
Dennison said concerns about that rust compelled engineers to lower the legal weight limit on the bridge to five tons or less.
“I think it went all the way down to three. We didn’t know what condition it was in, so we were being safe. And we were right,” he said, offering the bridge as his proof. “It didn’t fall down.”
When the cable of the bridge was originally wound, petroleum grease was slushed between individual wires, an atypical practice at the time that Dennison believes saved the cable from rusting.
“They replaced the cables on the mid-Hudson some time ago,” he said. “These cables were still shiny when we opened them up to take a look 15 years ago. It was amazing.”
How many wires are holding up the Wurts Street Bridge? Some 1974 galvanized wires made from Number Six Roebling gage, named for John Roebling, the builder of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Work on the main structure began in August 1920. For erecting the steel towers and parts of the main span trusses, two steel guy derricks were constructed with 90-foot booms on timber towers 100 feet high. All steel was received by rail and sorted at the base of the north tower. Materials necessary for the south portion of the bridge were taken across the creek by barge. The sand and stone for the concrete were also brought by barge.
After the full load was on the main cables, they were finished by wrapping them with Number Nine galvanized wire. All structural steel was given a field coat of red led paint and two finishing coats of battleship grey.
“On this historic occasion, looking forward to the future, the investment that the State of New York is making in the Wurts Street Bridge will guarantee that this architectural gem remains in place to the betterment of the City of Kingston and the Town of Esopus,” said assemblymember Cahill at the time when the rehabilitation project begun.
Almost three years later, with the politicians leading the way, the gathered crowd was allowed to walk out onto the bridge.
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