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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
On May 24, 1983 Americans celebrated the Centennial of the Brooklyn Bridge's opening. On that day in New York City over two million people joined in the Rededication Day activities; millions more watched the fireworks display on television. During the months preceding Rededication Day, numerous magazines had featured articles on the Bridge; Ken Burns' award-winning documentary was broadcast on PBS; New York City museums opened exhibitions on the Bridge; the New York Academy of Sciences held a Bridge symposium; new artistic works with the Bridge as their subject were created; and a collection of Centennial souvenirs was produced. Rededication Day itself marked only the beginning of six months of Bridge-related activities. During 1983, the Brooklyn Bridge was as much “in the air” as it was in the East River. This kind of interest and affection can be described in terms applied to similar phenomena: Brooklyn Bridgephilia; Brooklyn Bridge Fever; Brooklyn Bridgemania.
1. McCullough, David notes in The Great Bridge (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972, p. 548)Google Scholar that the Brooklyn Bridge “has been the subject of more paintings, engravings, etchings, lithographs, and photographs than any manmade structure in America” as well as being used in other forms like popular songs and drama. The Brooklyn Museum's The Great East River Bridge 1883–1983 includes a “Selected Filmography” of the Bridge's appearance in motion pictures. Since that list was published, the Bridge has been featured in a number of recent films, including “Terms of Endearment,” “Trading Places,” “Stayin' Alive,” and “Ghostbusters.”
2. Some reasons for the Brooklyn Bridge's cultural prominence as an American artifact have been explored by Trachtenberg, Alan in Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965)Google Scholar, though he focuses primarily on responses to the Bridge in the nineteenth century and on twentiethcentury artists such as Hart Crane and Walker Evans. David McCullough in The Great Bridge presents a detailed and dramatic account of the Bridge's construction, yet he also explores its symbolic meaning and reasons behind its popularity. The Brooklyn Museum's catalogue for the Centennial Exhibit, The Great East River Bridge 1883–1983, offers a valuable addition to this literature, particularly Albert Fein's essay on the Utopian urban design that the Bridge was a part of, and Lewis Kachur's discussion of “The Bridge as Icon,” which examines the work of numerous painters from the nineteenth century through the present.
3. Smith, Robert J., “Festivals and Celebrations,” in Folklore and Folklife: An Introduction, Dorson, Richard, ed., (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 168.Google Scholar
4. See Turner, Victor's discussion of “communitas” and the “liminal” state of celebration in his introduction to Celebration: Studies in Festivity and Ritual, (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982), pp. 11–30.Google Scholar
5. Carmody, Deirdre, “An Old Bridge's Birthday is a Hometown Carnival,” New York Times, 25 05 1983, pp. A1, B4.Google Scholar
6. The Centennial Commission and Hamilton Projects approved designs for official souvenirs and then licensed manufacturers to produce them. Hamilton Projects also licensed souvenirs for the Bicenntenial in 1976. See Kanner, Bernice, “Selling the Brooklyn Bridge,” New York, 6 12 1982, pp. 18–20.Google Scholar
7. Even though Warhol used the style and color of tourist postcards, contemporary postcards always look toward Manhattan. Most earlier postcards also face Manhattan, though many take a long, bird's-eye view of Brooklyn rooftops or the Brooklyn shipyards. For examples of the latter, see The Great East River Bridge catalogue, p. 104.Google Scholar
8. Telephone interview with the owner of Summa Gallery in Brooklyn Heights, February 2, 1984.
9. The Bridge's aesthetic and spiritual qualities were mentioned most often in informal conversations with New Yorkers during the Centennial. Their comments were echoed by professional writers such as Hamil, Pete, in “Bridge of Dreams,” New York, 30 05 1983, pp. 30–47Google Scholar, and McCullough, David in “The Great Bridge and the American Imagination,” New York Times Magazine, 27 03 1983, p. 80Google Scholar. The Bridge's spiritual aspect, arising in part from the Gothic arches, has been noted earlier by artists such as Hart Crane, Joseph Stella and Georgia O'Keefe. On Rededication Day, Mayor Ed Koch commented, “When you look at that Bridge, it looks like a cathedral, and when you walk across it you feel you are treading holy ground,” in “An Old Bridge's Birthday is Hometown Carnival.”