Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge
- Formerly spelled:
- Verrazano-Narrows Bridge
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Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, long-span suspension bridge spanning New York Harbor from Brooklyn to Staten Island, built by Othmar H. Ammann from 1959 to 1964. An exceptionally expensive engineering project largely because of the problem of land acquisition, its total cost was $325 million. It is the longest suspension bridge in the United States and the 17th longest in the world.
Its 4,260-foot (1,298-metre) main span was, until the completion of the Humber Bridge in 1981, the longest in the world. The double-decked six-lane-wide roadway, 228 feet (69.5 metres) above mean high water at midpoint, is supported by four cables hung from towers 693 feet (211 metres) high. The cables themselves weigh nearly 10,000 tons each and the roadway 60,000 tons.
In 1960 the bridge was named in honour of the 16th-century explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, but an orthographic disagreement led to its being spelled with a single z. In 2018 New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that was passed in the state senate to rectify the misspelling.
