COVER STORY
Keep bay bridge as it is, says community group
By LEAH CASNER
Bay Currents writer
Should the 125-year-old Sheepshead Bay footbridge be replaced with a wider, modern bridge, or be designated a city landmark and left alone?
The Bay Improvement Group, for one, is adamant that the bridge should be preserved. “We like the bridge just the way it is, thank you,” BIG president Steve Barrison says.
There also have been some proposals to ban fishing on the bridge.
BIG has defended
the fishing and the fishermen who have used the bridge for years, stressing
that fishing is an activity that is synonymous with Sheepshead Bay.
When the fishing is good and when Sheepshead
Bay welcomes more visitors in the spring and summer, the footbridge
tends to become more crowded. Barrison asks: “Is this any reason to
rip it down and build a super-walkway? Do we really want to remove the
last vestiges of our historic community in order to save a few minutes
of walking time? Solutions to the occasional inconvenience exist that
do not warrant a loss of such magnitude.”
The first footbridge was constructed
in 1880, which included a drawbridge section to let boats through. In
1881 the Supreme Court ruled that it was a public highway and since
then it has survived, with various restorations and locations, to serve
the Sheepshead Bay and Manhattan Beach communities. Photos of the bridge
around 1900 resemble today's bridge. It was in the 1930s however, the
time of the reconstructed fishing piers, that the present bridge was
renewed.
The colorful history of the footbridge actually dates back to the 1870s, when it was proposed to span the shallow bay to gain access to Manhattan Beach.
Coney Island Creek separated the mainland from the barrier islands,
running from New York Harbor to Sheepshead Bay in the east. As Coney
Island grew into a famous resort, people came over to the bay, enjoying its fresh breezes and peacefulness. Soon a community arose where
previously only fishermen had put up
wooden fishing shacks. Now along the bay shore, inns, hotels and
taverns sprouted up.
Meanwhile, back in Coney Island, a Midwestern banker and railroad
man, Austin Corbin, brought his family to the seashore for his
child's heatlh
Walking past the rowdy parts of the resort, he came
to Sedge Bank, a strip of beach which had become attached to the
island when, as workers dredged for sand to be used as landfill, a channel on
Pelican Beach opened up and another closed , adding a stretch of
swampy land to the eastern end of Coney Island. .
Corbin bought the land, which reached a mile farther east than
today's Manhattan Beach, and built two grand hotels, the “Manhattan
Beach” and the “Oriental,” to offer seaside resorts for the wealthy
who would then not have to mingle with the crowds in the scruffier
environs created for the working and middle classes in Brighton Beach and
Coney Island.
Corbin, who would go on to become president of the Long Island Rail Road,
built a railway to the resort, with the entrance to the beach as the station. This was patrolled by Pinkerton guards who, meeting each train at its arrival, would filter out anyone they suspected were pickpockets or ruffians. They also barred Jews and anyone else considered to be " undesirables."
The sewage system installed for the hotels caused a good deal of acrimony
between the Sheepshead Bay community and the Manhattan Beach hotel
proprietors. The system consisted of pipes emptying the hotels' waste directly
into the bay , where it was presumed the ocean currents would carry it
away. But newspaper reports at the time indicated the plan was
not very effective; the pollution eventually wiped out the “sheep’s head” fish of
the bay's namesake, and giving general offense to the area.
So when Austin Corbin decided to build a bridge to the bay side from
Manhattan island, it may not have been the best conceived idea. In
1874, Corbin had received permission to construct an extension of
Ocean Avenue across Sheepshead Bay, with the requirement that if the bridge were built it would become a public highway, under the control of the commissioners of highways for Gravesend.
The tensions were such that, when the bridge was first built, in 1880, the
committee on streets, avenues and roads was directed to investigate
if the structure was in accordance with law and resolutions -- at a
meeting where it was also decided to investigate whether to move the
morgue.
It seems Corbin did not comprehend that the
bridge could go both ways, and that bay people could stroll over to the
Manhattan Beach side or that servants would also cross into the
other and avail themselves of the beverages served there, and,
returning to their positions in the great hotels, be unable to
function in their duties.
So Corbon decided to tear down, the bridge. In 1881 several of his workmen
destroyed sections of it and made it unusable.
But those who had previously objected to the bridge found it very
pleasant after all, and called upon the commission of highways and
roadways, to remind Corbin that it was not his decision to make.
The commission sent a force of carpenters to repair the bridge,
along with police officers to protect them, only to be met with
Corbin's own security forces, as well as his waiters and laborers. The private police arrested the officer in charge, accusing him of trespass, and hauled him before a judge very friendly to Corbin' interests, who refused to adjourn the case, or allow the officer to maintain counsel.
Refusing to accept the authority of the court, the officer was fined
$10 and carted off to jail until it was paid, while local
people called for the judge's impeachment. .
The following month, Corbin's men were themselves arrested as they
tried to prevent repairs to the bridge. The whole fight came to a heads when the highway commission got a court order to restrain the Manhattan Beach company from interfering with the bridge, and the crowd which had gathered to
witness the anticipated confrontation was left disappointed.
The construction of sewers and highways has moved the bridge from
the actual end of Ocean Avenue to 19th Street, but, except for new lampposts and signs and periodic replacement of the wooden walkway planks, the bridge has hardly changed
from the one first constructed
130 years ago