When it opened in 1916, the Hell Gate Bridge (more properly titled the New York Connecting Railroad Bridge) was the longest, heaviest, strongest steel arch bridge in the world and the only four-track long-span railroad bridge ever built. Its stunning profile combines the slightly reversed curve of its upper arc with granite-faced Roman arch towers.

Stretching from the Sunnyside Railroad Yards in Queens across the turbulent confluence of the Harlem and East Rivers and Long Island Sound known as Hell Gate, to Ward's Island, on across the Little Hell Gate to Randalls Island and then over the Bronx Kill to The Bronx, the bridge was built to complete the linkage of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad system with the Pennsylvania Railroad system via the Pennsylvania Railroad tunnel under the Hudson River. Together, tunnel and bridge created an all-rail route over the Bronx Kill to The Bronx and replaced the time-consuming and expensive water link for New York and New England bound passengers and freight from the south. The Hell Gate bridge marks the apogee of American railroad power and prosperity.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the neighborhood that took its name from Hell Gate had been a pastoral area of summer homes and farms, but by 1912, when work began on the Hell Gate bridge, the river's edge had begun its conversion to an industrial area. Today the area is a mix of residential and commercial usage.