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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 2016
PARTING SHOT FROM DANNY MILLER
A weekly snapshot from The Daily Astorian and Chinook Observer photographers
The sun sets on the Columbia River as seen from the Astoria Riverwalk in June.
ODDITY
Two Z’s
New push aims to ix
misspelling of NYC’s
Verrazano Bridge
By VERENA DOBNIK
Associated Press
N
EW YORK — It’s an error that has
loomed over New York Harbor for more
than 50 years: The name of the majes-
tic Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is spelled wrong.
Despite a new petition drive to make it
right — the bridge is named for 16th-century
Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano (two
Z’s) — the state authority that controls the
span has stubbornly held to the one Z position
it’s taken for years: We know it’s wrong, but
we’re not changing it.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority
oficials say it would simply be too expensive
to change all the signs, brochures, maps and
websites. Changing the name of New York’s
Triborough Bridge to the Robert F. Kennedy
Bridge in 2008, for example, reportedly cost
the state $4 million.
“This is a travesty,” said Robert Nash, a
21-year-old Brooklyn college student who
started an online petition to add the other Z to
North America’s longest suspension bridge.
“To honor a man and name a bridge after him
and not spell his name right?”
Italian-Americans deserve better
Nash, whose mother is Italian and father
half-Italian, said Italian-Americans every-
where deserve better. “We were always proud
of being of Italian descent, and this rich cul-
ture shaped who I am,” he says.
After all, there was no question how Ver-
razzano, the irst European to explore New
York Harbor in 1524, spelled his name. So
why, Nash asks, should Italian-Americans
have to endure the error every time they cross
the 4,260-foot span between Brooklyn and
Staten Island? Why should they seethe every
year when the bridge gets worldwide atten-
tion as the starting point for the New York
Marathon?
And as critics have noted over the years,
would it be acceptable if the George Washing-
ton Bridge or John F. Kennedy International
Airport were spelled wrong?
So why push for the name change now?
AP Photo/Craig Ruttle
The Australian naval frigate HMAS Sydney passes under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge
as it enters New York Harbor in 2009. For over 50 years, the Metropolitan Transportation
Authority has spelled the name of the bridge with a single Z, but the Italian Italian ex-
plorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, whom the bridge is named after, spelled his name with
two Z’s.
Nash, whose petition was irst reported by the
Brooklyn Paper and its Brooklyn Daily web-
site, says it came to him by chance as he was
taking pictures of the bridge with his girl-
friend. He noticed a sign with the name and it
just looked wrong. His suspicions were con-
irmed when he checked Italian websites for
the explorer’s name, “and I said, `Wow!”’
Source of mistake unclear
Exactly how the error was made in the irst
place is unclear.
At the time the bridge opened in 1964,
the nation was still grieving President John
F. Kennedy’s assassination, and famed New
York urban planner Robert Moses had report-
edly favored naming the bridge for him. It
was John LaCorte, founder of the New York-
based Italian Historical Society of America,
who led the ight to have the bridge named for
Verrazzano. Some have speculated Gov. Nel-
son Rockefeller signed off on the name with
one Z.
But according to Gay Talese, who chron-
icled the span’s construction for The New
York Times and in his book “The Bridge,”
the origin of the error was the original 1959
building contract, which spelled Verrazzano’s
name with one Z.
“We’re talking about a typo and everybody
let it go,” Talese told The Associated Press.
“Nobody noticed because nobody really knew
who Verrazzano was then.”
Others, however, have managed to get the
name right.
A statue of Verrazzano in lower Manhat-
tan includes the two Z’s, as does a bridge over
Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay.
One of the city’s prominent Italian-Amer-
icans, Mayor Bill de Blasio, chuckled when
he was informed of the petition drive during a
news conference Wednesday.
“I will get a task force going on that right
away and get back to you,” the mayor joked.
“As a proud Italian, I need to go back and do
my research.”
AP Photo/Seth Wenig
A road sign indicating an entrance to the
Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is seen in New
York on Wednesday. It’s an error that has
loomed over New York Harbor for more than
50 years: The name of the majestic Verraza-
no-Narrows Bridge is spelled wrong.
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