LARGEST BRIDGE IN THE WORLD.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 456, 22 March 1890, Page 4

LARGEST BRIDGE IN THE WORLD.

Gustav Lindenthal, a celebrated bridgebuilder and engineer of Pittsburg, is having prepared a model of a bridge to span the Hudson from Jersey City to New York. John H Stubbe is constructing the model at Hazelwood. The drawings show an immenseandgracefulstructure stretched across the Hudson at the foot of Fourteenth street, New York, to the Jersey shore, about midway between Jersey City and Hoboken.

One immense span. ■.1,850 feet in length, clears the river, and two other spans, each over twenty-live hundred feet, extend from piers on the shore to the immense anchorage on either side. The structure is to be a sus-' pension bridge, the main span swinging from two towers, Which surmount immense piers that are to be built at the river’s edge in order nob to interfere with the shipping. These towers are to be 506 feet in height, almost double those of the Brooklyn Bridge. From high-water mark to the floor the roadway is 140 feet, 20 feet more than that of the Brooklyn Bridge. The span between the bowers is to be 1,255 feet longer than that of the Brooklyn Bridge. Instead of the cables being carried away, inlaid and anchored, they are secured in the immense squares of masonry at the termination of the short, spans. The shore anchorages are to be 12C feet in height, 180 feet wide and 400 feet long, of s did masonry, except a tunnel through the upper end of the roadway. The roadway is to bo eighty-five feet wide, and will accommodate six railroad bracks. It will be supported by four immense cables, two on each side, passing over the towers and fastened into either end. These cables are to be four feet in diameter and will contain 15,000 steel wires each. These will weigh two tons to the foot. The full length of the bridge is to be something over seven thousand feet.

The scheme is to avoid the ferriage across the Hudson river by railroad companies. There are ten railroads centring at Jersey City, and the proposed bridge, with its six tracks, would give ample relief. The cost is estimated at £BOO,OOO. It is the purpose to have the Government take hold of the project and build a national bridge. An appropriation will be asked from the next Congress of £BOO.OOO for the purpose. The bridge will dwarf every structure of the same kind in the world. It will be nearly twice the size of the Brooklyn Bridge in all its proportions.