22/10/2026
A little history
Before there was a modern Condado, there was a lagoon, and two brothers who decided to cross it.
Hernán and Sosthenes Behn arrived in Puerto Rico in 1906 from St. Thomas and went on to found the Porto Rico Telephone Company. In 1908 they began developing Condado, a district of Santurce they planned as a streetcar suburb of Old San Juan. To reach it, they built a bridge across the Condado Lagoon.
Construction ran from 1908 to 1910, and the bridge opened on May 22, 1910. Residents soon started calling it Puente Dos Hermanos, or Two Brothers Bridge, after the Behn brothers, and the name stuck. The crossing ties Condado to the islet of San Juan, linking a new seaside neighborhood to the old walled city.
The bridge has changed over the years. A reconstruction and restoration project began in 1999 but stalled over permits, resumed in July 2011, and a rebuilt bridge was inaugurated in December 2011. That means the structure people drive across today is the modern replacement, not the original from 1910, though it still carries the name and the story.
The Behns later helped found ITT, and Condado went on to become one of San Juan's best-known neighborhoods, with hotels and beaches that drew visitors for decades.
We have not found a reliable description of the original engineering, so we leave it out.
Do you remember crossing this bridge, or a story your family tells about Condado?
