Bloomberg Wants Bridge Renamed for Koch

By [Dan Rivoli] Officially, the city calls it the Queensboro Bridge. In Manhattan, the locals know it as the 59th Street Bridge. How about the Ed Koch Bridge? Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced a plan to rename the century-old bridge after the 86-year-old former mayor. â??Like Ed Koch, the bridge is a resilient, hardworking New York City icon that"s been bringing people together for a long time's and will probably outlast us all, said Bloomberg in a statement. Koch was unaware the renaming was being planned. He said he got the call from Bloomberg Dec. 7, while riding in a car to the NY1 studios to film the talking-head television program Wise Guys. â??Up until that moment I have never heard of this, Koch said. â??It"s the only government secret that I know of that remained secret. Naming the 59th Street Bridge in Koch"s honor, which the City Council must approve, is certainly fitting. Before becoming mayor, the West Village-based Koch represented the Upper East Side in Congress. But more than the geographical connection, the two are emblems of New York City. Koch is brash and opinionated, gregarious and affable; a consummate New Yorker. And, aside from the Brooklyn Bridge, the 59th Street Bridge is the city"s most recognizable and iconic. Woody Allen and Diane Keaton basked in the bridge"s presence while sitting on a park bench in 1979"s Manhattan. Paul Simon penned an eponymous folk ditty about â??feeling groovy while walking along the 59th Street Bridge. To Koch, there is no bridge more fitting to bear his name. â??It"s not a beautiful, handsome bridge. It doesn"t soar to the sky in the heavens, Koch told Our Town. â??It"s a workhorse bridge. That"s what I am. Rugged, craggy, but get the job done. That"s what it does. Perhaps most importantly is that the Koch administration, after the financial crisis in the mid-1970s, created a capital program that repaired the city"s roads and bridges. Historian Jonathan Soffer, who recently wrote the mayor"s biography Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City, said that Koch restored the city"s credit and invested money to restore transportation infrastructure. â??Another mayor might have cut taxes and left the city to rot and the bridges to collapse, Soffer, a professor of history at NYU-Poly, wrote in an email. The rechristening of the bridge was announced after the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel was formally renamed after former Governor Hugh Carey. But getting the bridge"s new name enshrined in the lexicon of New Yorkers can be difficult. Just ask those who walk the Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue), drive on the Joe DiMaggio Highway (West Side Highway) or cross the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge (the Triborough Bridge).