20
COURIER LIFE, APRIL 8-14, 2022
‘Original’ Brooklyn Bridge reopens
BY BEN BRACHFELD
The Brooklyn Bridge has officially
reopened after three
months of construction. No, not
that one. The “original” Brooklyn
Bridge.
We’re talking the Vechtbrug,
an approximately 60-foot
long drawbridge spanning the
Vecht, a tributary of the Rhine
River, in Breukelen, the Dutch
town of about 10,000 residents
from which our borough’s name
derived. The bridge has been
closed to traffic for the past three
months to undergo a complete rebuild,
and reopened on April 2.
The new bridge will be opened
Saturday with speeches from
Breukelen Alderman Arjan
Wisseborn, Bertien Quarles van
Ufford (the Lady of adjacent Gunterstein
Estate, a castle with a
real-life moat), and former bridge
operator Henk Britink. The new
drawbridge takes advantage of
new remote-control technology,
though it can still be operated
with a crank if in a crunch.
In what would be an unprecedented
development in Brooklyn,
the town of Breukelen demolished
the old, wooden bridge —
which had stood since the 1950s
— in January and quickly rebuilt
a new, steel bridge in just three
months. The bridge was modeled
after a previous bridge that stood
on the site in the first half of the
20th century, according to Bram
Donkers, a Utrecht resident who
for the past decade has fostered
sister city relations between
Brooklyn and Breukelen.
“In the warm Trans-Atlantic
relationship between Breukelen
and Brooklyn, the bridge is a very
useful symbol for bringing both
sides together,” Donkers said in a
message to Brooklyn Paper.
A bridge has crossed the Vecht
for hundreds of years; Donkers
estimates about 700 years though
notes that historians are divided
on the subject. It unquestionably
pre-dates the Brooklyn Bridge,
though, leading some residents
of Breukelen to cheekily refer to
their crossing as the “original
Brooklyn Bridge.”
Brooklyn and Breukelen —
which is now part of a larger
municipality called Stichtse
Vecht — have forged closer ties
in recent years. Former Borough
President Marty Markowitz visited
the town in 2009, Donkers
said. Last year, as part of the
375th anniversary of Brooklyn
adopting its name (after Dutch
colonists established a settlement
on Long Island called
Breuckelen in 1646), former Beep
and current Mayor Eric Adams
signed a “Protocol of Partnership,
Historical Connection, and
Future Ties” with Stichtse Vecht
Mayor Ap Reinders.
“As we sign our official friendship
agreement today, let us
continue to work together to
strengthen the connection between
our cities, and to bring cultural
exchanges to our respective
communities,” Adams said in a
video message to Breukelen last
year. “Because as Brooklyn’s seal
says, ‘unity makes strength.'”
The Vechtbrug in Breukelen, the Netherlands in 2022. Courtesy of Brooklyn Bridge Breukelen Foundation
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