To celebrate the 99th anniversary of the opening of the Bear Mountain Bridge, more than 100 people gathered on its deck on Nov. 17 to pose for the recreation of a recently discovered 1924 photo taken of the workers who constructed it.
The more recent photo was taken by Scott Snell of SDS Imagery, a Beacon film production company hired by the nonprofit Historic Bridges of the Hudson Valley. Snell has been working with HBHV on a documentary about the bridge’s history. Traffic was stopped for about 15 minutes.
The bridge opened to the public on Nov. 27, 1924 (Thanksgiving Day), after being dedicated the day before, according to HBHV. It was the first vehicular bridge over the Hudson River south of Albany and the first suspension bridge with a concrete deck. For a brief period, it was also the bridge with the longest suspended span in the world.
For more information on the centennial, see bmb100.com. HBHV is creating a database of laborers who worked on the bridge; email [email protected] with names.
Photos courtesy Frank Goderre (1924) and Scott Snell (2023)
