Igor I. Sikorsky Memorial Bridge deck that saved money but was unpopular with drivers. A toll plaza stood at the eastern end of the Sikorsky Bridge until Connecticut abolished tolls in 1988. The toll booth is now preserved in Stratford at the Boothe Memorial Park and Museum. The Sikorsky Bridge is named after aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky, whose helicopter factory is located along the riverfront immediately north of the bridge. After years of environmental studies, the Connecticut Department of Transportation awarded an $87 million contract to Balfour Beatty Construction to build the replacement bridge, the Igor I. Sikorsky Memorial Bridge, in 2000. The southern half
Igor Sikorsky Kiev Polytechnic Institute. After the academic year, Sikorsky again accompanied his father to Germany in the summer of 1908, where he learned of the accomplishments of the Wright brothers' Flyer and Ferdinand von Zeppelin's dirigible. Sikorsky later said about this event: "Within twenty-four hours, I decided to change my life's work. I would study aviation." By the start of World War I in 1914, Sikorsky's airplane research and production business in Kiev was flourishing, and his factory made bombers during the war. After the Bolshevik revolution began in 1917, Igor Sikorsky fled his homeland, because the new government threatened to