page_title: Whitney Young Memorial Bridge
section_title: Bridge history and renaming
hierarchical_section_title: Whitney Young Memorial Bridge / Bridge history and renaming
caption_attribution_description: English: 1964 photo of the Whitney Young Memorial Bridge, when it was still called the East Capitol Street Bridge, prior to the 1980 rebuild that changed the sidewalks and medians. RFK Stadium and its parking lots, before all the trees died, is in the background.
context_page_description: The Whitney Young Memorial Bridge is a bridge that carries East Capitol Street across the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. in the United States. Finished in 1955, it was originally called the East Capitol Street Bridge. It was renamed for civil rights activist Whitney Young in early 1974. The bridge is 1,800 feet long, its six lanes are 82 feet wide, and it has 15 spans resting on 14 piers.
context_section_description: The bridge and approaches on the west side were built through what had been planned as Anacostia Park, a recreation area and National Sports Center. Construction of the bridge required redesign of that park, and abandonment of the Kingman Lake feature of the plan. The western approach included an ellipse that was to serve as a parade ground, but by 1957 planners were already viewing it as a stadium site. 
  In 1957, the Kenilworth Expressway was constructed to connect the bridge to the new Baltimore-Washington Parkway and along with that eastern approach was changed to include ramps between the two. This project rendered the downstream sidewalk obsolete for more than 50 years. By 1964, the Anacostia Freeway had been extended north to meet the Kenilworth Expressway, which was later subsumed by the freeway. 
  In 1961, Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium (later renamed RFK) opened on the former parade grounds in the western ellipse, parking lots filled the land on both sides of the approach and connections to the parking were built as part of the stadium. 
  In early 1974, the East Capitol Street Bridge was renamed the Whitney M. Young, Jr. Memorial Bridge in honor of Whitney Young, an activist during the Civil Rights Movement and National Urban League Executive Director .
  In 1980, District officials spent $8.5 million reconstructing the deck of the bridge and adding safety improvements. The bridge was carrying about 56,000 vehicles a day at that time. One side of the span was closed at a time, with two-way traffic proceeding on the open portion. Safety improvements included adding a median wall and barriers between the road and the sidewalk and replacing the barrier on the outside of the sidewalk with a higher fence to prevent suicides. It also narrowed the sidewalks to 3 feet 9 inches (1.14 m). 
  The bridge continued to have work done as it neared a half century of use. The roadway's condition was noticeably rough in 1997, and so in 2004, the District of Columbia resurfaced the deck and made repairs to three piers at a cost of $3.4 million. In 2009, the Federal Highway Administration's National Bridge Inventory rated the bridge as "not deficient." The District of Columbia Department of Transportation (DDOT) estimated that by 2015, the bridge would be carrying only about 60,000 vehicles per day—about 10 percent fewer than in 1996.
  In 2019, the District began another rehabilitation project for the bridge. The work includes repairs to both the substructure and the superstructure, rebuilding  and widening (to 6 foot 3.5 inches) the sidewalks and their approaches, repair to the bridge rail, installation of new overhead signs and other small repairs.  
  The East Capitol Street Bridge saw its first suicide when one-legged 48-year-old Adolphius L. Groom leapt from the bridge on the morning of July 13, 1967. The first major accident on the bridge occurred on March 7, 1969, when two vehicles collided head-on on the span, killing two people. Another major crash occurred on September 18, 1971, when a vehicle on the bridge was rear-ended, killing one of the occupants. In October 1977, a man traveling at high speed across the bridge rear-ended another automobile and died. Another suicide occurred on December 16, 1986, when a man leapt from the bridge and landed on a moving vehicle below. Another traffic fatality occurred on the bridge on November 13, 1986, when a driver struck a disabled vehicle on the bridge and was himself rear-ended by a third car. In February 1990, an ambulance taking a patient to the hospital was struck on the bridge by an automobile traveling at about 100 mph, leaving the driver and passenger in the vehicle in critical condition.
  The bridge was also the scene of a famous rape and murder in D.C. history. On October 1, 1971, Richard Anthony Lee was accused of kidnapping Robert L. Ammidown and his wife, Linda E. Ammidown; forcing them to drive to the East Capitol Street Bridge overpass above the railroad tracks; and raping and killing Linda Ammidown. Police later learned that Robert Ammidown had hired Lee to kill Linda in a
caption: A photograph of the Whitney Young Memorial Bridge leading to RFK stadium in 1965, before the 1980 reconstruction.
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