Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge
Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge, 1900s
Then
The Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge opened as a two-track, seven-span cantilever truss bridge across the Hudson River connecting Poughkeepsie with Highland, N.Y., on January 1, 1889. It was the first bridge built across the Hudson south of Albany and was at the time the longest bridge in North America.
Over the years several railroads used the bridge, including the Philadelphia and Reading Railway, the Central New England Railway, the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, and the Penn Central. As use of the bridge declined drastically during the 1960s, the Penn Central, created by merger in 1968 and in bankruptcy by 1970, did little to keep the bridge in good condition. A fire started on the bridge on May 8, 1974, possibly caused by a spark from a freight train. The bridge was closed to trains thereafter. Some articles about the bridge and fire are collected at the Catskill Archive.
Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge, 2009
Now
Two years after the fire, the newly-formed Conrail was forced to acquire the bridge, but did not make any repairs to it; the company was sued by Poughkeepsie in 1981 because debris from the deck kept falling on vehicles driving beneath the structure. Conrail then tried to dispose of the bridge, either by demolition or by selling it (a cheaper alternative for the company).
In 1983, a lawyer and bridge enthusiast offered to buy the bridge from Conrail. Due to circumstances within Conrail, this deal never went through, and instead the bridge was sold for $1 to an entity called Railway Management Associates, which did not perform any upkeep on it. In 1998, the bridge was deeded to the nonprofit Walkway Over the Hudson. After years of fundraising and construction, the bridge reopened on October 3, 2009 to pedestrians and bicycles, and now is part of the New York State Historic Park System.