The old Goethals Bridge between Staten Island and Elizabeth started coming down Monday night, not with the boom of a spectacular implosion, but with laborious lowering of the bridge's middle span on to a barge.



Crews began removing a 350-foot long piece of the iconic steel cantilever truss bridge at 8 p.m. Monday night. It took a little more than eight hours to lower the steel center span, using a pulley system, down to a barge waiting 135 feet below in the Arthur Kill, said Steve Coleman, a Port Authority spokesman.

This first football field long section of the old Goethals bridge was transported to Port Newark for dismantling and scrapping, Coleman said.

What remains of the 650-foot old Goethals Bridge is approximately 150 feet of structure on each side, Coleman said. That demolition work will continue throughout 2018 while the second span of the new bridge is completed in mid-2018, Coleman said.

The first of two spans of the new Goethals Bridge opened last June. Since then, jackhammers, saws and cranes have nibbled away at the concrete and steel approach roads to the old bridge.

The approach structures in Elizabeth and Staten Island had to be removed first, so the second new bridge could connect to the same abutments that the original bridge used, officials said.

The original bridge opened to traffic on June 29, 1928, on what would have been the 70th birthday of Major Gen. George Washington Goethals. Goethals, who administered and oversaw the construction of the Panama Canal, was the Port Authority's first consulting engineer.

Larry Higgs may be reached at lhiggs@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @commutinglarry. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

