The Manhattan Times

Remembering the High Bridge in its heyday

by Corinne Ramey

In the 1920s, Esther Leeming Tuttle strolled over the High Bridge with her mother and sister, suspended over the Harlem River. “It was the kind of place you went for a stroll, to be seen,” said Tuttle. “The ladies had gotten pretty short skirts by then.”

Tuttle is the great-great granddaughter of one of the bridge’s designers, and was invited out onto the High Bridge on Nov. 4 so the parks department could record her memories of the historic structure. (See video - courtesy of the parks department - to the right.)

Tuttle remembers her and her older sister, dressed as twins, being paraded across the 140-foot bridge, taking in the sights.

“I could see boats and in those days there were a good many sailboats,” said Tuttle, holding on to her green felt hat to keep it from blowing off the bridge and into the river below. “There were carriages, too.”

But in this century, the 161-year-old pedestrian bridge, which connects Washington Heights to the Bronx, is closed to the public. The memories of 98-year-old Tuttle, the great-great granddaughter of one of the architects of the original High Bridge, underscore the importance of the bridge to the community and look forward to the reopening of the bridge in the future.

“It was a Sunday afternoon event,” said Northern Manhattan Parks administrator Jennifer Hoppa, imagining what the bridge was like when Tuttle was a child. “People promenaded on the bridge, and it was a place of pleasure.”  Bridge walkers could peer down at the carriage races along the Harlem waterfront, and later there was an amusement park at the north end of the park and the Polo Grounds stadium to the south.

“It was known as one of the places to visit when you came to New York,” said Tuttle. “You visited the zoo, the battery and the High Bridge.”  Until 1941, the New York Aquarium was located in the current Battery Park.

Tuttle grew up in a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights and on a farm in New Haven, Conn. Her father, an architect, was killed in World War I, and Tuttle and her siblings were brought up by their mother, who viewed New York City as a living, breathing classroom. “My mother was interested in the city,” said Tuttle. “She saw to it that we traveled down to Coney Island and up here to the bridge.”

As an adult, Tuttle worked as an actress, performing in off-Broadway and Broadway plays including Robert Sherwood’s Petrified Forest, where she acted alongside Humphrey Bogart and Leslie Howard. She recalls acting in the World’s Fair in 1939, and playing Abraham Lincoln’s wife. “There was a full orchestra playing music of Kurt Weill,” she said. “There were 40 horses in the show.” More recently, she has been the board chair of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, started a second career as a “granny actor” and model, and spent as much time with her grandchildren as possible.

The bridge, which closed in 1970 due to public safety concerns – according to legend, someone started throwing bricks off the bridge – is expected to reopen in 2013, said Hoppa.

In the next four years, construction will make the bridge safer, and public forums will decide everything from how to light the bridge to whether bicyclists will be allowed.

“Everyone gets an opportunity to assess the design and project approach,” said Hoppa, “So that results in a long lead time before the shovel is actually in the ground.”

The parks department estimates the work will cost about $70 million, Hoppa said.

Although still sprightly for a near-centenarian, Tuttle is not sure she’ll be around to promenade on the bridge when the project is complete in 2013.

“I really don’t expect to be there then,” she said. But today, she thinks of the bridge often. “Whenever I pass it, I throw a kiss to the bridge and think that it’s such fun to have that beautiful structure that my family had a part in building.”