Beautiful Bridge

And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced . . .

(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!) . . .

Hart Crane (1930).

To engineers and architects, Hart

Crane's rhapsody to Brooklyn Bridge was an unscientific, rummy rodomontade. They considered Brooklyn Bridge an antique, remarkable for its historical associations (it was built by rule of thumb), esthetically redeemed only by its brute strength.

Since Brooklyn Bridge, suspension bridge spans have grown nearly three times longer, traffic loads have quadrupled, construction time has been cut to a fifth.

Basic reasons: new alloy steels, vast technical advancement in construction and bridge theory (John Roebling did not even know the theory when he built his World Wonder). A big factor in modern bridge masterpieces is one Engineer John Roebling never heard about: the professional bridge designer and architect. To him must go substantial credit for creating modern bridges which begin to approach in delicate, aerial appearance what bridges have always stood for in men's imagination.

New high in such bridge masterpieces is New York City's Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, spanning the East River between Long Island and The Bronx. Last week the American Institute of Steel Construction voted it "most beautiful monumental steel bridge completed in the U. S. during 1939." Fourth longest in span (2,300 ft.

against the Golden Gate's 4,200, George Washington's 3,500, San Francisco-Oakland Bay's 2,310), it is the work of famed Swiss-born, 61-year-old Engineer Othmar H. Ammann (George Washington, Hell Gate, many another great bridge) and Architect Aymar Embury.

Responsible for the delicacy of its silvery, 377-ft. towers is their covering of stainless steel plates (which also lessens maintenance cost). With piers and even riveting merged into its tenuous design, its bridge mass has been refined almost to a point where it looks unsafe.

On crossing motorist, even more than on distant spectator, the Bronx-Whitestone

Bridge leaves a vivid impression of airiness. Between its low railings and threadlike, widely spaced trusses, the main span suddenly opens out on a panoramic sweep of marine landscape over which a motorist has an illusion of flying.

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