9. One of the Earliest Predecessors of the Kosciuszko Bridge Was a Wooden Drawbridge

“The draw is wider than that part of the old bridge left standing….A man not in his sober senses would have no difficulty in walking off from it into the water, and many a man in his sober senses might, on a dark evening, unconsciously stumble into the same trap.”

-Brooklyn Eagle, Nov. 2, 1869

This dry piece of wit describes one of the earliest crossings at Newtown Creek, a privately owned wooden draw bridge that, due to its toll, became known as the Penny Bridge. To read the newspaper accounts of this bridge over its lifetime is to encounter a perpetual litany of complaints about expensive repair costs, unwanted tolls, incompetent engineers and erratic builders. This has been a constant right up to the present.