[5][6] The need for a new bridge spanning the Anacostia River was first identified in 1949 after worsening traffic at Barney Circle led to widespread citizen complaints.

[8] The Commission was supported by an influential group of business people and civic leaders known as the Committee of 100 on the Federal City.

[11] But just three weeks later, the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge opened across the Anacostia River, alleviating traffic congestion in southeast.

[15] In early March 1950, the Subcommittee on District Appropriations of the House Committee on Appropriations turned down a request to fund a study of the Massachusetts Avenue site, and the Subcommittee on the District of Columbia of the House Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments held hearings which supported the D.C.

[16] Federal highway officials also testified that the bridge would help ease access to Maryland Route 214, which was originally planned to connect with the Baltimore–Washington Parkway at the District line but which had been forced into a more southerly direction.

[21] The western approaches would split over Kingman Island and connect Independence Avenue SE and C Street NE.

[25] 1.3 million cubic yards (990,000 m3) of fill would be used to raise the peninsula 35 feet (11 m) above the low water mark, and the western approaches built on the new land.

[29] Construction on the western approaches was blocked for a month after residents of Suitland, Maryland, (upset by loud trucks passing down their streets) won a month-long restraining order against the project so that contractors could devise and implement a noise-abatement program.

[6][33][34] By late September 1954, 73 percent of the superstructure had been completed and only stone protections for the piers remained to be finished for the substructure.

[35] The Greenway Apartments (located at 3539 A Street SE) obtained an injunction in February 1955 stopping work for a month on the project after alleging that the excavations for the road would affect the foundation of their building.

[5] Tippy Stringer, a local television personality at WRC-TV (and later the wife of NBC news anchor Chet Huntley), cut the ribbon opening the bridge.

[5] 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.

[37] 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.

[38] 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.

The roadway's condition was noticeably rough in 1997,[42] and so in 2004, the District of Columbia resurfaced the deck and made repairs to three piers at a cost of $3.4 million.

"[2] 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.

[45] The first major accident on the bridge occurred on March 7, 1969, when two vehicles collided head-on on the span, killing two people.

[50] 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.

Police later learned that Robert Ammidown had hired Lee to kill Linda in a plot to inherit her substantial fortune and win custody of their 12-year-old son.

In 1982, D.C. officials proposed building the Barney Circle Freeway, which would have linked Interstate 695 (which dead-ended at a junction with Pennsylvania Avenue SE) to the Whitney Young Memorial Bridge by building a six-lane freeway from Barney Circle to the bridge through Anacostia Park.

[56] In September 2013, United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) rated the Whitney Young Memorial Bridge both "fracture critical" and "structurally deficient".

[58] DDOT began an extensive program of preventive maintenance to ensure the bridge did not deteriorate further in advance of a planned 2018 major rehabilitation.