Reopening A Bridge And Reconnecting A Community In Mount Vernon

MOUNT VERNON, NY — With the opening of the newly rebuilt Third Avenue Bridge, all of the bridges connecting Mount Vernon communities are open to traffic for the first time in more than ten years.

The restored bridge in the city business district not only connects neighbors, but also provides a public art centerpiece for the quarter. The bridge is the fourth that the MTA has opened in downtown Mount Vernon in the last three years and the second in just three months. The opening completes the replacement of the previous 121-year-old bridge that was demolished in April 2020.

“This bridge is the same bridge a young kid from the South Side of Mount Vernon named George walked across almost every day,” Westchester County Executive George Latimer said at the official ribbon-cutting on Tuesday. “Thanks to this project undertaken by the MTA, more kids with bright futures ahead of them will see just what government can accomplish that has an impact on the daily lives of the people it serves. This bridge will remain a gateway to Mount Vernon’s historic downtown as the City and the County aim to revitalize this jewel.”

SEE ALSO: MTA Work Complete On Downtown Mount Vernon's 10th Ave Bridge

MTA worked with artist Damien Davis to create artwork for the new bridge. “Empirical Evidence” references ancient and contemporary cultures through abstracted and stylized symbols. The artwork by Davis spans across 11 panels along the bridge’s east façade.

“Ultimately, the work is about language and how powerful language can be, for both clarity and confusion. I want all the work I make to serve as a bridge—I think about language as a bridge, and symbols as language,” Davis explained. “For me, the question becomes how we take these larger complicated ideas, that can be hard to explain, break them down into simple shapes, and then allow new dynamic, complicated conversations to form around them. That is my hope for this project.”

The Third Avenue Bridge is the latest of four bridges that span Metro North’s New Haven line in downtown Mount Vernon that the MTA has replaced in the past four years. The 14th Avenue Bridge re-opened on July 3, 2019. The 6th Avenue Bridge was re-opened on Sept. 12, 2020 and the 10th Avenue Bridge re-opened on June 2, 2021. The MTA also replaced the Park Avenue Bridge in 2011.

Metro-North said it will now seek design-build proposals for the replacement of the South Street and Fulton Avenue bridges.

“I am excited that for the first time in a long time our residents can walk and drive over the Third Avenue Bridge,” Mount Vernon Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard said. “I want to thank the MTA and union workers who finished this project during a pandemic. The access to our Third Avenue corridor will only serve as a boon to our downtown economic development and ease traffic congestion. With the completion of this bridge, all of our bridges are officially open for the first time in more than a decade.”