Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges with the East River, New York City
The photograph shows the grace of the Brooklyn Bridge in contrast to the with the industrial pragmatism of the Manhattan Bridge. Although only forty years separate these two glorious suspension bridges that traverse the East River, they show the extraordinary changes in America’s view of itself in over those decades. On the right of the photograph, the Brooklyn Bridge shows nascent modernism in its elegant forms of the suspension cables draped over the 19th century Gothic forms and stone of the towers. Meanwhile the Manhattan bridge is stripped of nearly all decoration to a functional minimum of an all steel span.
