Two man made crocuses were sprouting into bloom in that spring of 1931, both belied the depression surrounding them and pointed toward a new and better tomorrow. One was a bridge; the other, a building. The building started up at the outset of the Great Depression; the bridge started over during the heady days of 1927.
The Hudson River, a formidable barrier, separates Manhattan from New Jersey. After the Roeblings built the Brooklyn Bridge connecting the then city of Brooklyn with the city of New York, engineers said the western connection between New York and New Jersey would have to be double the length of the world's longest bridge. Many experts thought spanning the Hudson was impossible; others believed a 3,000- foot bridge was possible, but incredibly difficult.
In 1924, Swiss immigrant Othmar H. Ammann was appointed chief engineer of the New York Port Authority. After consulting the world's best bridge builders, Ammann presented a plan to conquer the Hudson with the first co-ordinated bridge and highway developed solely for the automobile. The Port Authority issued bonds payable from bridge toll revenues and began work in 1927.
The George Washington Bridge would be 3,500 feet long with room to add a second deck underneath the main road when traffic increased in future years. The bridge's two 635-foot towers would support dual suspension cables containing 107,000 miles of wire. Much of the $60 million cost would pay for building approach roads to handle the projected 30 million vehicles a year.
On August 29, 1929, when the George Washington Bridge reached the half-way mark, former New York state governor and unsuccessful 1928 Democratic presidential candidate Alfred E. Smith announced plans for a sensational new office building for mid-town Manhattan. Smith was the front man for a consortium, led by General Motors Acceptance Corporation founder John Jacob Raskob, that planned to tear down an emblem of the Gay Nineties -- the Waldorf Astoria Hotel -- and build in its
