:: Guest blog post by Andy Hong ::

It is certainly no longer a secret and in fact, walking the Brooklyn Bridge has become a massive tourist attraction.  Walking the bridge is very much worth the time invested, as you won’t find a stone bridge on this scale anywhere.  It’s probably not as long as you think – the walking distance is less than a mile.  Conditions can be rough if it is windy (that is cold).  The views are fantastic down to the New York Harbor, the downtown and mid-town skylines, and upriver to the Manhattan Bridge and Brooklyn.  The wooden walkway is above car traffic but is down the middle so you will have to look over the roadway when looking out from the bridge.  As it gets later in the morning, foot traffic can get high and may bottleneck on the Manhattan side where it narrows down.  The walk across the Brooklyn Bridge from the Heights, down Broadway, to Battery Park is an excellent itinerary as it takes you by Trinity Church, Saint Paul’s Chapel, Wall Street, and very close to other downtown sites.

The new secret about “walking the bridge” is that there are two other suspension bridges over the East River to walk.  For example, it’s great to walk the Manhattan Bridge, which is much more industrial with its girders and rivets than the Brooklyn Bridge. If you cross the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan into Brooklyn, take the exit staircase down to Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass (DUMBO.)  There you can walk along the East River through Bridges Park.  Find your way to Jay Street and the on-ramp to the Manhattan Bridge.  You may want to use GPS, as the streets can be not so obvious down in DUMBO.  You can get to the Manhattan Bridge from the Brooklyn Bridge on the Manhattan side also, but you’ll have to wind your way through and around the Federal court buildings.

The architectural flourishes of the Manhattan Bridge reflect the industrial optimism of its time and is much more art deco than the gothic Brooklyn Bridge.  Very few walk the Manhattan Bridge and so it is ratty and unkept, and there is little impetus to clean it up.  It maintains an “Escape from New York” sensibility from the dirty eighties with its heavy ironwork, peeling paint, and graffiti over dedication plaques.

Unlike the Brooklyn Bridge, you can see directly to the water without having to look over car traffic.  You can only look downstream, but the views are better than what you can see from the Brooklyn Bridge.  The views of the Brooklyn Bridge with the Manhattan skyline in the background are really spectacular on a nice day.

You will have to look through the chain link to see the views, but you have to look through the suspension cables on the Brooklyn Bridge also.  The subway runs right next to the Manhattan Bridge walkway, so it gets very loud when the train comes by, but it also feels a little gritty and pretty exciting!  The entrance to the Bridge on the Manhattan side has impressive monuments and an arch.  I do not know much about these, but they are cool.  The Bridge drops you off right in the heart of Chinatown where you can easily spend a decent amount of time.  Or if you are not too tired, you can head to the next bridge by making a right turn on the Bowery and walk uptown toward the Williamsburg Bridge. Take a right on Delancy, which will take you up to the walkway to the bridge in a few blocks.

The Williamsburg Bridge was the second bridge built over the East River and was the first all steel bridge over the river.  It isn’t considered the most attractive bridge and is mostly an oversight in the East River Bridge community, as it isn’t maintained very well and is really pretty grungy.  Even Hollywood doesn’t want to blow it up in CGI.  The walkway is over the traffic as with the Brooklyn Bridge.  The views are not particularly overwhelming, since it is past the turn in the East River (Corlear’s Hook).

Even though walking this bridge isn’t the most enjoyable walk of the three bridges, it connects two very interesting neighborhoods.  Those are the Lower East Side on the Manhattan side and Williamsburg on the Brooklyn side.  If you take the first staircase exit off the bridge when you walk into Williamsburg and turn right (downriver,) you’ll walk into a Puerto Rican and Jewish neighborhood.  Or you’ll walk into the newly discovered hip and happening neighborhood if you turn left.  When we walked into the ethnic neighborhood, it was pretty quiet (it was Saturday) with quite a few Hasidic Jews who were looking at us as if we were just as strange to them as they were to us.  Upriver is the once working class, but now swinging, neighborhood that most people think of when they think of Williamsburg.  I’m not really sure what it’s like at night, but in the daytime, it’s pleasantly sedate with pretty cool bars and restaurants that you can get into without pushing through crowds or screaming music (or screaming people.)

Getting back and forth from Williamsburg can be a pain in the butt, as you’ll have to catch the L line subway train back to Manhattan and you will need to make a connection.  However, an interesting alternative is taking the East River Ferry.  The East River Ferry is a very dependable people mover and is not meant to be a tourist attraction (for that, you would want the Circle Line which people speak highly of.)  It runs maybe about every twenty minutes and is like clockwork.  It’s cheap, and you can get tickets ahead of time or on the boat (credit cards accepted at the machines at the docks).  Its ends are at South Street in Downtown and in Midtown.  In between, it stops at Bridges Park, two stops in Williamsburg, and two stops in Midtown.  They don’t mess around.  It’s get on and get moving.  Pay attention or you might miss your stop.  On the other hand, get lost in the moment.  You can catch your stop on the way back.  It’s something like five minutes between stops.  The ferry may run fast, but the ride can be magnificent as you pass under the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg Bridges, have views of both sides of the river, and can see down to the Harbor (Statue of Liberty and such.)

This zig zag tour of all three Bridges and the adjacent neighborhoods can make for a very long day, but it really is worth doing, even if you only walk one bridge.  And if you are like us, you could use the exercise.  Plus, you’ll be eating and drinking along the way….right……..right!!

 

Photo Credits: Andy Hong.