Its 1675-foot main span, the longest for a steel arch bridge at that time, crosses the Kill van Kull between Bayonne, New Jersey, and Staten Island. Othmar H. Amman, who designed and supervised the construction of the Bayonne Bridge, was required to span a waterway used extensively for commercial shipping, and to design a bridge without towers that would obstruct shipping vessels.

The result was a steel arch, entirely different from Amman's other New York bridges. Although the Bayonne Bridge appears to compete with the Sydney Harbor Bridge in Australia, construction on the Sydney Bridge actually started five years before that of the Bayonne Bridge. However, the Bayonne was completed several months earlier than the Sydney and is 25 inches longer than its Australian counterpart.

Final plans necessitated a skew bridge, built at a 58 degree angle to the water in order to make the bridge properly connect with highway schemes on either of its ends.

After the Bayonne's opening on November 15th of 1931, the gold shears used in the ribbon-cutting ceremony were sent to its near-twin in Australia, which had its opening ceremony four months later. As a token of appreciation, Sydney separated the shear and sent one blade back to Port Authority, along with a replica of the last spike used in the arch of the Sydney Bridge.

Although the Bayonne was planned as an essential part of the regional system linking the boroughs of the City of New York and the City itself to the state of New Jersey, it began to pay for itself only when completion of the Verrazano-Narrow Bridge opened Staten Island to the development and increased usage of the Bayonne.