Print Size: 20" x 24" (Frame Size: 30" x 42")
This rendering of the completed bridge was published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1873, while construction was still underway (even before a footbridge for construction workers was stretched between the towers in 1877). The ink and wash drawing was less about verisimilitude than about the romance and heroic achievement of a bridge that would connect the two independent cities of Brooklyn and New York. At a time when surrounding buildings were only 3-4 stories high, the notion of monumental towers nearly 300 feet high was simply mind boggling. The tableau provides an insight into 19th-century New York, with its busy river traffic, tall ships, dense buidings, steeples, smoke stacks -- and heavy pollution.
