History
Built and opened by the Marine Parkway Authority in 1937, it was the longest vertical lift span in the world for automobiles. The curled tops of the towers were designed to give the bridge a whimsical aspect. Following the 1940 merger of the Marine Parkway Authority and Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, the operation of the bridge fell to TBTA.
In 1978, the bridge was renamed for Gil Hodges, the former first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Hodges kept a residence in Brooklyn after his team moved to Los Angeles. He also played for the Queens-based New York Mets at the end of his career, and managed the Mets from 1968 until his sudden death in 1972, including victory in the 1969 World Series.
Read more about this topic: Marine Parkway-Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun’s rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)