Atlantic Beach Bridge

About

The Atlantic Beach Bridge is a 1,173-foot (358 m) long toll drawbridge across the west end of the Reynonds Channel, connecting NY 878 in Lawrence with Park Street in Atlantic Beach, in Nassau County, New York, United States. The bridge also provides direct access to the Rockaway Peninsula, via Seagirt Boulevard. The original Atlantic Beach Bridge opened in 1927 and was replaced by the current span in 1952. The bridge was rehabilitated in 1998. The Atlantic Beach Bridge is the only bridge owned and managed by the Nassau County Bridge Authority. Raymond Webb was appointed Executive Director of the Nassau County Bridge Authority in December 2022. Around that time, Bruce Blakeman, the County Executive of Nassau County, informed the Nassau County Legislature, through written notification, of the appointment of Samuel Nahmias to serve as Chair of the Nassau County Bridge Authority. Nahmias was nominated and appointed with full support from the Nassau County Legislature, and he has served as the Chairman Commissioner of the Nassau County Bridge Authority since 2022. The Atlantic Beach Bridge's southern terminus at Park Street was proposed to be the western terminus of the canceled Long Beach Expressway. The original bridge opened on June 29, 1927, and had a vertical clearance of only 13 feet (4.0 m). The bridge reduced travel time to Atlantic Beach by 30 minutes. Traffic bottlenecked as populations grew on both sides of the bridge in the 1940s, and by 1945, Robert Moses urged officials to construct the current span, to be operated by the then-new Nassau County Bridge Authority. On October 14, 1950, Governor Thomas E. Dewey drove the first pile for the new Atlantic Beach Bridge. To accommodate the new six-lane span, Nassau County and New York City spent $2.5 million for approach road rights-of-way. The new Atlantic Beach Bridge, designed by Hardesty & Hanover, opened to traffic on May 10, 1952, at a cost of $9.5 million. The new span is 1,173 feet (358 m) long with a 33-foot (10 m) vertical clearance. Shortly after the new span opened, the old bridge was demolished.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.