 The bridge was proposed by a study in 1954.Othmar H. Ammann designed a double-deck suspension bridge similar to the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which would build the bridge.A Cross Harlem Expressway was to run across the Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem to a second deck of the Triborough Bridge, also at 125th Street; this had also been proposed in 1929.