Borden Avenue Bridge

The Borden Avenue Bridge serves as a rare example of a retractile bridge, a design that moves diagonally across the water rather than swinging or lifting. Instead of rising into the air, the entire road surface rolls back on heavy iron wheels along submerged tracks to let ships pass through the narrow channel of Dutch Kills. Engineers chose this unusual mechanism in the early twentieth century because the tight, constrained space of the waterway made traditional drawbridge designs physically impossible to install.