Festival focuses on High Bridge future

By Steven Gnagni
Managing Editor

From 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, June 7, the High Bridge Coalition, a group that is lobbying to reopen the walkway over the High Bridge, will hold a festival on the Manhattan side of the bridge. Activities will include tours, information booths, arts and crafts, a free film screening, and information about the restoration project.

The festival will highlight the work done so far and the work still to come. The coalition is expecting to learn soon how much the restoration will cost. The restoration will include a repainting of the steel span, which currently has lead paint, and repointing of the stone on the bridge platform.

“We’re waiting for a report from the [New York] City Department of Transportation,” said Maria Luisa Cipriano, South Bronx outreach coordinator for the Partnership for Parks. “They’re doing an inspection of the bridge. Preliminary figures are $25 million, and timewise, we’ve said it would take about 10 years.”

Once the report is released, the coalition will begin raising money to pay for the reconstruction. The coalition has already raised almost $3 million—for reconstruction of the Manhattan access to the bridge and park construction.

Three agencies have jurisdiction over the bridge—the Department of Environmental Protection, the Parks Department, and the Department of Transportation—and Ms. Cipriano said the money may come from federal transportation monies plus money from the city council and Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion Jr. Mr. Carrion, in a State of the Borough speech earlier this year, claimed he wanted the bridge reopened.

The coalition recently began a campaign to get information about the bridge out. The coalition created posters that say “Walk on Water—Restore the High Bridge.” The coalition is also starting work on a prototype of “High Bridge in a Box,” a tool that local public school teachers will be able to use in classrooms to boost knowledge about the bridge. “High Bridge in a Box” will likely include overheads and a CD-ROM.

Ms. Cipriano is also looking for students and teachers interested in working on a mural on the Bronx side of the bridge. She would like the mural to show what the walkway would look like if it was reopened.

The bridge, which was built in the 1830s, is New York City’s oldest standing pedestrian bridge. Between the late 1840s and the 1950s, the bridge served as an aqueduct, part of the Croton Water System that brought water from upstate New York to New York City.

However, the pedestrian walkway has been closed since the 1970s. In 1998, the Highbridge Unity Center (HUC) initiated a campaign to reopen the walkway. HUC joined with several other organizations to form the High Bridge Coalition.

For more information about the festival on June 7 or for more information about the coalition’s work, call Ms. Cipriano at (718) 430-4641.