I hope no one minds that this post is not about a recent article. It's about an anniversary that is a month away. However it fits well with the bridge post earlier today (yesterday for most of you).

The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge will celebrate its semi-centennial on November 21st. It provided the first land connection from Staten Island (Richmond County, the least populous of the five boroughs) to the rest of New York State.

It was also one of Robert Moses's last projects. Thus it has neither a pedestrian walkway nor rail transit, though it has a few express buses and the S79 SBS, New York City's version of bus rapid transit. It gets fast pedestrians one day each year -- for the NYC Marathon.

It costs $15 to drive a car from Brooklyn's Bay Ridge, making it more expensive than the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel from Virginia Beach to the DelMarVa (or the same price during the summer).

It's still the longest suspension bridge in the United States. It changed Staten Island from the last semi-rural outpost in the Big Apple to "the place they take the trash".

Note that the link above is slightly dated, even though it otherwise provides the meatiest research. The eastbound toll booths, which stopped collecting tolls in 1986, were finally removed in 2012.

Some of the most interesting photos are from someone that lived in Bay Ridge during the construction. Lots of displaced Bay Ridge residents still have a bitter feeling about the giant offramp that took 800 homes. Even the celebration of the golden anniversary may be staid, since that laundry rarely gets aired effectively.

By the way, I found a very silly link at Google Plus. Oh sure, it has a map. It also asks whether this bridge is your business (and has a Manhattan phone number for some reason).