Sunday, January 16, 2011

Bridge of the Week #43: Stillwell Ave. Bridge




Staying in the Coney Island area, this week's bridge is the Stillwell Ave. Bridge in Brooklyn. It carries Stillwell Ave. over Coney Island Creek between Shore PArkway on the north and Neptune Ave. on the south. It is just a few blocks east of the Cropsey Ave. bridge, from my last post.

I have had a hard time finding stats on the bridge, but it's a fixed steel and concrete bridge with two lanes of traffic in each direction and a sidewalk on each side. It's not real long and not real old and not real interesting in and of itself.
This is a good time to mention that while Coney Island isn't actually an island any more, it used to be. It was the westernmost of the barrier islands off the southern coast of Long Island, separated from Long Island by Coney Island Creek, which ran from Gravesend bay on the west to Sheepshead Bay on the east. Part of it was little more than tidal flats. Officials at one time considered dredging and straightening it for a ship canal, as was done on the Harlem River, but instead it was filled in between Shell Road and East 15th St. in the 1930's as the Belt Parkway was being constructed. But the name Coney Island remained, as Coney Peninsula doesn't have that same ring.
Stillwell Ave. was named after Nicholas Stillwell (1603-1671) who had a farm in the area and was patriarch of a prominent Brooklyn family.

2 comments:

  1. Phil, nice background info on an otherwise non-descript bridge. Too bad that someone can't at least add a "Welcome to Coney Island" sign somewhere in the middle of this bridge to give it some sort of interest for those crossing over it.

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  2. Too bad that someone can't at least add a "Welcome to Coney Island" sign somewhere in the middle of this bridge to give it some sort of interest to those crossing over it.

    ReplyDelete