8. There’s an Abandoned Transfer Bridge in Riverside Park

Riverside Park gantry

In the early 2000s, the Riverside South Planning Corporation announced plans to convert a floating bridge on West 69th Street into a ferry terminal. Even Donald Trump supported it, thinking it would take pressure off the 72nd Street 1/2/3 subway station. It was once a transfer terminal for the New York Central Railroad, facilitating the movement of freight from railyards to river barges known as “car floats.” This one is “Floating Bridge  No. 4” and according to the New York Times in 2001, it has “a pair of hinged bridge decks suspended by cables from a barnlike overhead housing. Motors inside that housing lifted and lowered the decks to align them with the floats, whose position depended on the tides and the loads they carried.”

In 2008, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation recommended against the ferry plan because dredging would destroy the habitats for aquatic plants and animals. Fortunately, the D.E.C. was not against preserving the structure itself. It has since been stabilized and forms a nice reminder of the West side’s industrial past.