The Triborough Bridge opened on 11 July 1936.
First proposed in 1916, construction did not begin on the bridge until 25 October 1929 -- Black Friday -- and quickly stopped as the Great Depression began.
Robert Moses resurrected the project in 1933, and made himself chairman of the Triborough Bridge Authority, created to fund, build, and operate the complex of 3 bridges to connect the Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens.
Construction resumed in November 1933, and quickly became one of the largest public works projects of the Great Depression, more expensive than the Hoover Dam (which cost $49 million and opened in Sept. 1935), costing $60 million (over $1 billion in today’s currency). More than 5,000 people worked on the construction site of the Triborough Bridge, and according to historian Robert Caro, the construction of materials for the bridge “generated more than 31,000,000-man hours of work in 134 cities in 20 states.”