George Washington Bridge

George Washington Bridge vehicular suspension bridge across the Hudson River, between Manhattan borough of New York City and Fort Lee, N.J.; constructed 1927-31. It is one of the longest suspension bridges in the world. Its main span is 3,500 ft (1,067 m) long and 250 ft (76 m) above the water. Cass Gilbert was the consulting architect, and O. H. Ammann was in general charge of the planning and construction. In 1962 a lower deck of six lanes was completed.

Browne, Sir George Washington (1853–1939). Scots architect and writer. From 1881 to 1895 he was Rowand Anderson's junior partner, having worked in London with Nesfield who greatly influenced his later development. In 1887 he won the competition to design Edinburgh's Central Library (completed 1890) with an essay in the François I^er style at George IV Bridge, and used the same style for the British Linen Bank (1902–5—now Bank of Scotland), at the corner of George and Frederick Streets, Edinburgh. Among his other works the Braid (former United Presbyterian) Church, Morningside (1886), the cheerful Hospital for Sick Children (1892), the National Memorial to Edward VII at Holyrood (1912–22), and the fine YMCA Building, St Andrew Street (1914–15), all in Edinburgh, should be cited. From c.1895 to 1907 he was in partnership with J. M. D. Peddie.

Bibliography

AHe, iii (1992), 52–63; DW;
RIBA Journal (Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects), ser. 3 xlvi/376 (1939), 141–3

Washington, George (1732–1799) Revolutionary army officer and U.S. president. Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, George Washington got his first military experience during the French and Indian War (1754–63). He won the conflict's first small engagement after he built Fort Necessity near Fort Pitt in 1754, but soon had to surrender to a superior force. As an aide to Gen. Edward Braddock the next year, Washington organized an orderly retreat after the general was killed in the ambush that decimated his force. Washington commanded all Virginia forces before resigning his commission in 1758. He began the Revolutionary War as a delegate to the Continental Congress, but in June 1775 they selected him unanimously to be commander of chief of the new Continental army. After managing a successful siege of Boston, Washington lost most of his army in a series of disastrous battles around the city of New York in 1776. He revived Patriot fortunes with winter victories at Trenton and Princeton. In 1777 he lost battles at Brandywine and Germantown, as well as the city of Philadelphia. His army dwindled during the hard winter of 1777–1778 at Valley Forge, but Baron von Steuben's training and the French alliance improved the American situation. Washington's forces performed much better at Monmouth in 1778 as the British withdrew from Philadelphia to New York. Activity in the northern theater quieted after the British shifted their primary efforts to the South, but in 1781 Washington took a combined French-American army south to join with Gen. Nathanael Greene's forces at Yorktown, and with the assistance of the French fleet they forced the capitulation of Lord Charles Cornwallis's army. Washington remained in command of American forces until late 1783, awaiting the peace and quelling discontent in his poorly-paid army. After the war he presided over the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and was elected the new nation's first president in 1789. He served wisely and well before leaving office in 1797. He had one last appointment to military service in 1798, when President John Adams made Washington a lieutenant general in charge of a Provisional Army preparing for possible war with France, but the crisis passed and he never took the field. He died at his plantation at Mount Vernon.