The Hudson River Way is a 2002

pedestrian bridge A footbridge (also a pedestrian bridge, pedestrian overpass, or pedestrian overcrossing) is a bridge designed solely for pedestrians.''Oxford English Dictionary'' While the primary meaning for a bridge is a structure which links "two points at a ...

that links Broadway in

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...

Albany, New York Albany ( ) is the capital of the U.S. state of New York, also the seat and largest city of Albany County. Albany is on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River, and about north of New York City ...

with the Corning Preserve on the bank of the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...

. The bridge crosses

Interstate 787 Interstate 787 (I-787) is an auxiliary Interstate Highway in the US state of New York. I-787 is the main highway for those traveling into and out of downtown Albany. The southern terminus is, per New York traffic data, at the toll plaza fo ...

History

The Hudson River Way was intended to spark downtown and riverfront growth in Albany. The bridge's 8.5 million

dollar Dollar is the name of more than 20 currencies. They include the Australian dollar, Brunei dollar, Canadian dollar, Hong Kong dollar, Jamaican dollar, Liberian dollar, Namibian dollar, New Taiwan dollar, New Zealand dollar, Singapore dollar, U ...

cost was covered by the municipal government, the

New York State Department of Transportation The New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) is the department of the New York state government responsible for the development and operation of highways, railroads, mass transit systems, ports, waterways and aviation facilities in ...

($3.3 million including an

Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA, pronounced ''Ice-Tea'') is a United States federal law that posed a major change to transportation planning and policy, as the first U.S. federal legislation on the subject in ...

grant), and over 11,000 individuals, businesses, and other organizations who purchased personalized

brick A brick is a type of block used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a block composed of dried clay, but is now also used informally to denote other chemically cured cons ...

s to support the bridge's construction, which started in April 2001. These bricks now pave the structure. The grand opening was on August 10, 2002.

Murals

The bridge has thirty

concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of fine and coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement (cement paste) that hardens (cures) over time. Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water, and is the most wi ...

nine-foot

obelisk An obelisk (; from grc, ὀβελίσκος ; diminutive of ''obelos'', " spit, nail, pointed pillar") is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape or pyramidion at the top. Originally constructed by Anc ...

-lampposts that feature ''

trompe-l'œil ''Trompe-l'œil'' ( , ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface. ''Trompe l'oeil'', which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into ...

'' still-life paintings by AlbanyMural Lt

The Hudson River Way paintings were awarded the Americans for the Arts Public Art Network Award in 2004 for exceptional quality. Sponsored by individuals and organizations, each mural depicts a historical period or event in Albany's history, from prehistory, prehistoric

time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

s to the present. Many of the paintings are based on archaeological artifacts in area museums. Research for the composition of the paintings took 18 months and involved dozens of experts and historians from across the

Capital District A capital district, capital region or capital territory is normally a specially designated administrative division where a country's seat of government is located. As such, in a federal model of government, no state or territory has any politica ...

. The paintings themselves took two years to complete and were executed by principal artist Jan-Marie Spanar

and assistant artist Koren Lazarou. The paintings are made of a permanent pigment called potassium silicate. This same material has been used on exterior architecture in Western Europe since the mid-19th century and around the world in the past half-century. Very few American artists create paintings with potassium silicate mineral coatings, but these are the only pigments that can be applied to a stone or concrete substrate that will last indefinitely without fading or lifting from the surface. The Potassium silicate paints used on the Hudson River Way were produced by a German company called

Keimfarben KEIMFARBEN GMBH is a medium-sized company based in Diedorf near Augsburg. It belongs to the Leonhard Moll AG Group and is one of the world's leading manufacturers of silicate paints. Buildings such as the White House, Mariinskyi Palace, Bucking ...

. By 2018, however, many of the murals had faded.

External links

Hudson River Way at albany.org
Buildings and structures in Albany, New York Transportation in Albany, New York Pedestrian bridges in New York (state) Arch bridges in the United States Bridges in Albany County, New York {{NewYork-struct-stub