NYSDOT is designing a bridge to replace the Route 32 bridge over the Mohawk River.  Public meetings are scheduled to present alternatives.  One meeting is Tuesday, August 13, 2013, at 6:30 PM at the Waterford-Halfmoon High School.  The second is Thursday August 15 at 6:30 PM at the Cohoes Community Center.  Both meetings will be identical in format and content.

The original Cohoes-Waterford bridge, from an etching by David Cunningham Lithgow

There has been a bridge between Cohoes and “Northside”, as it was originally called, since 1795.   There have been many bridges since the first.

The current bridge, known by many locals as the Roosevelt Bridge, has been there since 1932.  Construction of the current bridge was authorized on February 18, 1931, by then-Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he signed an emergency bill authorizing $200,000 in bond money as New York State’s share of a new bridge connecting, Cohoes and Northside.  By the time the bridge was completed Roosevelt had won the presidential election in 1932.  He missed the dedication of the bridge, because he was bedridden with the flu at the executive mansion in Albany.

More details on the history of the Cohoes Waterford Bridge are contained in an extensive article by Anne Marie Nadeau published in the Spindle City Historic Society newsletter in the fall of 2009.

Construction on a new bridge is not expected to begin before Fall 2018.