Bridge of the Week #64: Hendrix Creek Bridge

This week's bridge continues the Belt Parkway series, the Hendrix Creek Bridge. This is the bridge number five of six, if traveling from west to east along the Belt.

Otherwise, there's not a lot more to tell about this bridge. It's a fixed steel and concrete bridge, built in the late 1930's with the rest of the Belt, reconstructed in the 1980's, and it has a sidewalk on the south side. The nearest street access is Erskine St. on the east and Pennsylvania Ave. on the west. Hendrix St. does pass underneath the bridge, right along the creek, but there is no access from the bridge or the Belt, and I think traffic on it might be restricted to landfill vehicles. (The beautiful green grass on both sides of the creek in the second picture above is landfill alongside Jamaica Bay.) The large buildings in the background in the first picture are Starrett City, a housing development built in 1974 and apparently renamed Spring Creek Towers in 2002. That development sits to the northwest of the bridge.

The bridge, by way of the creek, as well as the street were apparently named for Joseph C. Hendrix (1853-1904), a trustee for the Brooklyn Bridge Association from 1884, appointed Postmaster of Brooklyn by then-Governor Grover Cleveland, President of theBrooklyn Board of Education, Kings County Trust Co., American Bankers Association, failed in a run for Mayor of Brooklyn in 1883 but did hold a seat in Congress from 1893-1895. Hendrix Street had been named Smith St. but was changed in 1887.