Bridge of the Week #52: E. 233 St. Bridge

Another bridge since I'm a little behind, and hopefully another one by the end of the week. This one is a close neighbor to last week's (yesterday's) bridge, the E. 233 St. Bridge in the Bronx over the Bronx River.

This bridge consists of a pair of concrete and stone masonry arches, and runs on E. 233 St. between Bronx Boulevard and Webster Ave. It not only crosses the Bronx River, but also the Bronx River Parkway and the Metro North Harlem Line tracks. In fact, the Woodlawn station is just to the north of the bridge on the west side of the river, with access from Webster Ave. The bridge was built in 1931. It carries three lanes of traffic in each direction, with one lane in each direction being a left turn lane, and has sidwalks on both sides. The street and sidewalks are at grade, meaning no climbing involved, and actually the terrain rises to both the east and the west. I don't have a total length, but it is fairly long for Bronx River bridges, and also rises roughly 20-30 feet (really rough guess) above the river.

There is a pathway under the bridge on the west side of the river, but it doesn't look like it links in any way to the path from the E. 231 St. Bridge (see last post) or any other path in the park, and maybe it's just because I went there in the winter when there was a lot of snow on the ground, but the path looked unmaintained, trashed but barely trod, and just a little bit scary. It just seems to be one of those obsolete dead-end paths that has fascinated me lately. But it did allow me the first picture above. There is a staircase on the west side of the river on the south side of the bridge that leads down to the riverbank there, but the stairs are blocked off. Access to this path can be had from the Woodlawn station. It is possible to continue north from Woodlawn station about 3/4 of a mile on a nice new path underneath a couple of other bridges and ending at the Muskrat Cove Footbridge (previously discussed).

Other than continuing south along Bronx Boulevard and through Bronx River Park, it is also nice to run west on 233 St. along the north edge of Woodlawn Cemetery and eventually meet up with Van Cortlandt Park. Most of my own crossings of this bridge have been coming from Pelham Manor just to the north of the city line along Boston (Post) Road to E. 233 St., but that's a ways to run, and on streets. But just about a mile to the east on 233 St. is little Seton Falls Park, which looks fascinating but I haven't yet expored it. It does appear to have a little stream running through it (and the namesake falls presumably), but I don't think it would have a bridge that I would cover.