George Washington Bridge: Construction of Substructure

The principal features of the construction methods used on the foundations for the main piers and the anchorages for the cables of the George Washington Bridge are described in this paper. The foundation piers for the New Jersey tower involved the use of open coffer-dams, larger and deeper than any previously used on bridge construction. In New Jersey, the anchorage for the cables was obtained by excavating inclined tunnels in the solid rock of the Palisades in which the anchorage steel was embedded in concrete. The existence of Jeffreys Hook projecting into the Hudson River in the central part of Fort Washington Park provided an ideal site for the location of the piers for the tower, and the natural topography behind the point and adjacent to Riverside Drive offered adequate footing for the massive concrete anchor age at the New York end of the main bridge.