Print Size: 24" x 36" (Frame: 24" x 36") Architect: Hiram York
From a total of about 120 covered bridges in Maine, only nine remain, the most famous of which is the 97’-long Sunday River Bridge, or Artist’s Bridge, so-called because it’s been a favorite subject of painters and photographers from the beginning. In fact, its popularity was such that locals boasted that more paint was used depicting the bridge on artists’ canvases than on the bridge itself – a safe claim since it seems never to have been painted. The third bridge on the site, it was built by Hiram York in 1872 after the previous crossing was destroyed in a windstorm just eight months after completion. The replacement bridge incorporated a stronger Paddleford truss system developed in New England in the 1840s and regionally popularized. But it was never faced with the usual narrow horizontal clapboards so that its structure remains open to view, perhaps because of the expense of having to rebuild twice in two years. Despite such exposure to harsh main winters, the sturdy bridge served traffic until 1958 when a new bridge was constructed upstream.
