The new Sentry Bridge at Watkins Glen State Park solves the problem of building over an unstable gorge by refusing to touch it evenly, cantilevering entirely from the stronger north-side bedrock so its southern half can recede into open air. Designed by a team led by the New York offices of the Stuttgart-founded structural engineering firm schlaich bergermann partner (sbp) and the Oslo-founded, Brooklyn-based practice Snøhetta, the crossing was commissioned by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (OPRHP) to replace the park’s aging original span. It now serves as the gateway to a Gorge Trail that draws more than a million visitors a year.
A century of erosion made the decision unavoidable: inspections of the original Sentry Bridge identified structural deterioration caused by shifting rock and water damage, prompting OPRHP to commission a full replacement rather than a repair at Watkins Glen State Park. The brief asked for a permanent solution that would honor the historic crossing while resolving the site’s specific engineering problems.
That asymmetry is the structure’s defining move. The custom-built stainless steel bridge cantilevers 46 feet across the gorge, bearing entirely on the north side, where the bedrock is strong enough to carry the load alone. The resulting half-arch design recedes behind the southern rock face, opening views of the waterfall, the cliffs, and the Civilian Conservation Corps-era trails above rather than blocking them.
Materials chosen for endurance run through every part of the crossing: shot-peened stainless steel for the structure itself, black locust wood for the rails, custom bronze castings, concrete formed using rough-sawn hemlock, and a new bluestone landing. Each was selected for how it would hold up in a gorge environment, with the whole structure built to meet New York State Parks’ 100-year durability standard.
Three bronze castings carry the project’s most specific detail: an endangered dragonfly species, a rare plant found on site, and a small model of the historic arch bridge the new structure replaces, each cast into the bridge as a tactile marker of the gorge’s natural and cultural history. “Fabricated locally, the bridge carries the marks of its makers,” says Donesh Ferdowsi, a project designer with Snøhetta.
That engineering logic was, according to the project team, never separated from the experience it produces. “The bridge demonstrates how thoughtful engineering can support both performance and experience,” says Michael Stein, managing director at sbp, describing a lightweight, prefabricated structure designed to be installed with minimal disruption to the gorge below.
Custom black locust handrails and piton-inspired anchor points guide visitors across the bridge’s irregular surfaces, offering grip through tunnels, behind waterfalls, and up the rock-hewn staircases that connect to it — physical points of contact meant to heighten, rather than smooth over, the encounter with the landscape.
Elsewhere in the landscape typology, a similar instinct — using structure to grant access to dramatic terrain without dominating it — runs through AJC Architects’ Southern Lookout, a weathering-steel platform cantilevered over a former quarry in Sydney on a single point of contact, and Timber Architecture Workshop’s Kola Bay Lighthouse Viewpoint, an Arctic tower built almost entirely from wood joinery. Different materials, same underlying premise: infrastructure that earns its place in a landscape by touching it as little as possible.
That same asymmetry — a structure that commits its full weight to one side so the other can stay open — is what visitors will register first without necessarily naming it: a bridge that feels lighter than its span, because most of what holds it up is out of view.
Architecture Project Credits (bozza — anno e indirizzo ancora da confermare):
Sentry Bridge by schlaich bergermann partner (sbp) and Snøhetta | Location: 1009 N Franklin St, Watkins Glen, NY 14891 — Year: 2026 — Key materials: shot-peened stainless steel, black locust wood, bronze castings, bluestone