Today In History: The Opening Of The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge

By Idy Perl

Today is the 60th anniversary of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, which opened on November 21st, 1964. The bridge connects Brooklyn and Staten Island by going over the Narrows, a body of water which links the New York Harbor with the Lower New York Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.

The bridge is named after Giovanni da Verrazzano, who was the first European explorer to enter the New York Harbor and the Hudson River in 1524. When it was officially named in 1960 it was misspelled as the "Verrazano-Narrows Bridge," with a missing ‘z’, but the name was officially corrected in 2018. 

The idea to build a bridge across the Narrows was first proposed in the late 1920s by an engineer named David B. Steinman, but it took until the 1940s for serious plans to be made, and then until 1959 for construction to start. 

The upper deck of the bridge opened in November of 1964, and the lower level was added in 1969 to accommodate the increasing traffic. Today the bridge has an average of 200,000 vehicles that cross it every day.