The Queensboro Bridge, viewed from Sutton Square, ca. 1930.

When the Queensboro— originally named the Blackwell's Island Bridge for the island close to the Queens side of the East River— was built, the area around the Queens approach was still sparsely settled. Large portions of land in the vicinity were owned by a few wealthy families and the remainder of the borough was home to truck farms, cemeteries, and race tracks. Following the consolidation of Greater New York in 1898, consolidationist politicians sought to accelerate the development of industry and housing in Queens; completion of a bridge connecting Queens to Manhattan was essential to these ambitions.

Engineer Gustav Lindenthal, who was also chief engineer for the Hell Gate Bridge, collaborated extensively with architect Henry Hornbostel to conceive a bridge both functional and architecturally appealing. Hornbostel and Lindenthal used symmetry and repetition, towers capped with spires, and falsework support in an effort to compensate for the bridge's massiveness and relative lack of decorative ornamentation. The finished structure has been described as a cantilever bridge wit suspensions bridge lines.

When the Quebec Bridge, a contemporary cantilever project planned as the longest cantilever in the world, collapse in 1907, apprehensive City officials ordered exhaustive tests of Lindenthal and Hornbostel's design. Administrative misgivings led also to concern about the quality of materials, which were subjected to exhaustive reinspection.