8. The Triborough Bridge Required a Ridiculous Amount of Money and Labor to Construct
At the time of its construction, the scale of the Triborough Bridge project was truly unparalleled. According to Robert Caro, author of the Power Broker, entire apartment buildings had to be demolished to make way for its approach ramps. Even before its completion, its construction would have generated over 31,000,000 man-hours of work in 134 cities in twenty states.
Moreover, the total cost of the superstructure – $60.3 million in total – nearly matched the combined cost of all the Long Island projects Robert Moses had built in the previous ten years. Construction took seven years.