November 24, 1932: The Pulaski Skyway Opens

November 24, 1932: The Pulaski Skyway opens, connecting the downtowns of Newark and Jersey City via an ugly bridge that carries U.S. Routes 1 & 9 over the Passaic and Hackensack Rivers.

The "Black Beast" is a 3.5-mile long, ugly iron monstrosity, a steel deck truss cantilever bridge that connects the downtowns of Newark and Jersey City, over the New Jersey Turnpike, the Passaic River and the Hackensack River.

When the New Jersey Turnpike was being designed in the 1940s, there was a dilemma. Building it under the Skyway would have been a tight fit, especially for the kind of trucks that would be going under it. Building it over the Skyway would have been safer, but it would have required a very high bridge, costing a lot more money and taking a lot more time. They decided to build the Turnpike under the Skyway. There's never been a problem.

At only 56 feet wide, its 4 lanes of traffic are too narrow. By the dawn of the 21st Century, it was in bad shape. It underwent a major renovation between 2014 and 2018, as it was considered too expensive to build a new bridge and demolish the old one.

Kazimierz Michał Władysław Wiktor Pułaski was born on March 6, 1745 in Warsaw, the capital of Poland. He became one of the leading defenders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but was driven into exile after the First Partition of Poland in 1772.

He escaped to France, where he met Benjamin Franklin. He recommended Pulaski to the Continental Congress. He served alongside George Washington, saving his life at the disastrous Battle of Brandywine outside Philadelphia in 1777. He survived the frigid encampment at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania in 1777-78.

On Washington's direction, he reformed the Continental Army's cavalry units, and is recognized as "The Father of the American Cavalry" and "The Soldier of Liberty." He was killed at the Battle of Savannah in Georgia, dying on October 11, 1779, 2 days after being shot. He was only 34 years old.

Although Pulaski lived as a man -- he had a mustache that made him look a bit like later American author Edgar Allan Poe -- an examination of his bones in 1996 showed features that suggested that the person buried under the Pulaski Monument in Savannah was female. And yet, other factors, such as age, locations of wounds, and a DNA match to a Pulaski relative, conclusively proved the bones were his.

This led to a theory that Pulaski may have been transgender, "a woman living as a man," as has been the case with a few soldiers who later gained fame; or that he may have been "intersex," having both male and female features; or may simply have had an adrenal deficiency that would explain the female features of his bones. The organizations celebrating Pulaski since have treated him as exclusively male.

Along with Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko, he is the top hero of Polish-Americans, and Pulaski Day is a holiday in many places with high concentrations of Poles, on the 1st Monday in March (near his birthday), or on the 2nd Sunday in October (near the anniversary of his death, which is when New York holds its parade, usually the day before the big Italian-American parade on Columbus Day).

Pulaski is 1 of 8 foreign citizens to have been granted honorary U.S. citizenship by an act of Congress. Fellow Revolutionary heroes Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, of France, and Bernardo de Gálvez, of Spain, are among them. Not so included, as yet, are Kościuszko; French hero Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau; and German hero Friedrich von Steuben of Prussia (Germany). The others are Pennsylvania founders William and Hannah Penn, Winston Churchill, Mother Teresa, and Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved thousands from the Holocaust of World War II.

Another bridge, the Pulaski Bridge, built in 1954, connects the highly-Polish Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn with Long Island City in Queens, over Newtown Creek. Another connector, the Kościuszko Bridge, part of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE), built in 1939 and replaced in 2017, is also over Newtown Creek, between Greenpoint and the Queens neighborhood of Maspeth.  

The Pulaski Bridge, Brooklyn to Queens

Both Newark and Jersey City once had large Polish populations, but no longer. Two of my great-grandparents came from Borki Wielke, in the northeast of Poland, to Newark, where my grandfather and father were born. On the Waterfront at Jersey City's Exchange Place, where a major Pennsylvania Railroad station once stood, and there is now a PATH station, stands the Katyń Memorial, a 34-foot-high statue that stands as a tribute to Polish soldiers massacred by the Soviet Union's Red Army in 1940.

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November 24, 1932 was a Thursday, Thanksgiving Day. There were 3 games in the NFL:

* The New York Giants and the Staten Island Stapletons played to a tie, 13-13 at Thompson Stadium on Staten Island.

* There were then 3 NFL teams in New York City, including 1 named the Brooklyn Dodgers. They lost to the Green Bay Packers, 7-0 at Ebbets Field.

* And the Chicago Bears beat the Chicago Cardinals, 24-0 at Soldier Field.

Among the college football games played that day were these:

* New York University beat Carnegie Tech, 13-6 at before 30,000 at Yankee Stadium. NYU were the only New York City school playing that day, or even that week. Nor did either of New Jersey's teams, Rutgers or Princeton, play that week.

NYU dropped its football program after the 1952 season. In 1967, the Carnegie Institute of Technology merged with another Pittsburgh school, the Mellon Institute for Industrial Research, and the combined school became Carnegie Mellon University. The following year, its athletic program was dropped to what's now called NCAA Division III.

* The University of Pennsylvania beat Cornell, 13-7 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.

* Maryland beat Johns Hopkins, 23-0 at Municipal Stadium in Baltimore. Memorial Stadium would be built on the site in 1954. Johns Hopkins now play in Division III.

* Oklahoma and George Washington University played to a tie, 7-7 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. GWU dropped football after the 1966 season.

* Virginia beat North Carolina, 14-7 at Scott Stadium in Charlottesville, Virginia.

* Virginia Tech beat Virginia Military Institute, 26-0 at Maher Field in Roanoke, Virginia. VMI now play in the NCAA's Football Championship Subdivision (FCS, formerly known as Division I-AA).

* The University of Richmond beat the College of William & Mary, 18-7 at City Stadium in Richmond, Virginia. Both schools now play in the FCS.

* Tennessee beat Kentucky, 26-0 at Shields-Watskins Field (now Neyland Stadium) in Knoxville, Tennessee. Tennessee finished undefeated.

* Alabama beat Vanderbilt, 20-0 at Dudley Field in Nashville.

* The University of Mississippi (a.k.a. Ole Miss) beat Mississippi State, 13-0 in the "Egg Bowl" at Scott Field (now Davis Wade Stadium) in Starkville, Mississippi.

* Texas beat Texas A&M, 21-0 at Memorial Stadium in Austin.

* Nebraska beat Missouri, 21-6 at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska.

* In a traditional Rocky Mountain rivalry, Colorado A&M beat Wyoming, 23-0 at Colorado Field in Fort Collins, Colorado. A&M was renamed Colorado State in 1957.

* Washington State beat UCLA, 3-0 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

* The University of Southern California beat the University of Washington, 9-6 at Husky Stadium in Seattle. USC finished undefeated, beat the University of Pittsburgh in the Rose Bowl, and were awarded the National Championship.

* Two days later, Notre Dame beat Army, 21-0 in front of 80,000 fans at Yankee Stadium.

Baseball was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There were 3 games in the NHL, which was then based in Canada, whose Thanksgiving is held on the 2nd Monday in October:

* The New York Rangers and the Chicago Black Hawks played to a tie, 1-1 at the old (but then relatively new) Madison Square Garden.

* The Ottawa Senators beat the Montreal Maroons, 6-3 at the Montreal Forum.

* And the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Montreal Canadiens, 2-0 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.