After a series of accidents injured residents of a high-rise apartment building serving Rockefeller University in New York City, officials recognized that they needed a bridge to get residents over the traffic swarming on and off a highway that separated the building from the campus.
Wendy Evans Josephs, in getting acquainted with the university president emeritus Torsten Wiesel, learned that he had rejected a bridge design that circled a neighboring building, making it too costly to build. She sketched a cable-stayed alternative, suspending the bridge deck from a single pier and mast, which avoided disrupting traffic during construction and relocating a maze of underground utilities. It didn't rely on adjacent buildings for support-they didn't have the capacity. She submitted her idea unsolicited. Urged to develop it, she and join venture partner Weidlinger Associates, structural engineers, eventually built it for one fourth the rejected design's estimated.
From the apartment, Joseph routed the new pedestrian path through a laboratory building, linking it to a reworked plaza and entrance to another long-neglected complex of lab buildings. The rails and bridge deck were slimmed to keep vistas to the East River unblocked, and campus steam lines and utilities were extended under the walking deck, freeing the apartment building of costly vendor-supplied heat. The utility savings alone will pay for the cost of the bridge in just a few years. No one has to dodge cars and trash bins to enter the campus anymore. the elegance of the bridge and campus entrance now aids recruitment.
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