In 1524, Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazano found a pleasant place below steep little hills where a mighty deep-mouthed river ran into the sea. Until the 1960s, the only way from Brooklyn to Staten Island was by water, first by Indian canoes, then boats and ferries. A railroad tunnel was started from Brooklyn in 1923 but never completed, and plans for a vehicular tunnel were studied in 1929 and 1942 but dropped. In 1946, the state of New York authorized a bridge across these Narrows. Designed by Othmar Ammann, it was begun on August 13, 1959, by more than 1,000 workers. When dedicated on November 21, 1964, it was the world's longest suspension bridge and was named for Verrazano, who had discovered these Narrows 440 years earlier. For Staten Island, the bridge marked the beginning of a change from a rural landscape to today's urban environment.
