Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol

by Alan Trachtenberg

Fourteen of Walker Evans's evocative photographs of Brooklyn Bridge, most of which have never been published, appear in this edition of Alan Trachenberg's Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol . In the new afterword Trachenberg explores the history of Hart Crane's The Bridge , especially the poem's integral relationship with the powerful photography of Evans.

"[Brooklyn Bridge] is familiar in so many movies, in so many stage sets and, as Mr. Trachtenberg shows in this brilliant . . . book, it is at least as much a symbol as a reality. . . . Mr. Trachtenberg is always exciting and illuminating."— Times Literary Supplement 

"The book is a skillful and insightful synthesis of materials about Brooklyn Bridge from such diverse fields as history, engineering, literature and art. Essentially it asks the question of why Brooklyn Bridge achieved such great impact on the nineteenth century American imagination and why it has continued to have a significant impact on twentieth century art and literature. In addition to its exploration of the bridge's symbolic significance, which includes perceptive analyses of such particular works as Hart Crane's great poem cycle and the paintings of artists like Joseph Stella, the book also includes a solidly researched account of the conception, planning and construction of the bridge. Trachtenberg's account of the intellectual and cultural sources of the bridge is particularly fascinating in its demonstration of the convergence of many different philosophical and ideological currents of the time around this great engineering enterprise, illustrating as effectively as any discussion I know the complex interplay of ideas and material culture."—John G. Cawelti, University of Chicago

"Alan Trachtenberg's Brooklyn Bridge is a fascinating story, the philosophic genesis of the idea in Europe, John Roebling's heroic effort to translate it into masonry and steel, and the meanings that Americans attached to the physical object as an emblem of their aspirations."—Leo Marx, Amherst College, author of The Machine in the Garden

Genres: Nonfiction, Architecture, History

216 pages, Paperback

First published July 15, 1979

About the author

Alan Trachtenberg was Neil Gray, Jr., Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at Yale University.

Reviews

[June]

one of the epic in American Studies classic ... I read this book and knew for the first time how a bridge represent not only the physical building in itself, but also American historical [self] writing, including their culture and mentality and, all the more importance, their visionary idealism.

[Barrett Gough]

Look, the myth symbol comes in, properly so, for a lot of stick. But by golly, this book is a banger. And it holds up. And to think his English dept colleagues were still sitting around on their formalist shit just reading dumb poems.

[Dylan]

Trachtenberg commits to fine print the most apt distillation of Brooklyn Bridge into raw prose conceivably possible.

[Francisco D]

bro LOVES John Roebling

[Vit Bitencourt]

unexpectedly fun book but also a myth & symbol head so do with that what you will

[Max Havlin]

An incredible American Studies novel that explores the symbolism both nationally and internationally of the Brooklyn Bridge. A very quick and good read!

[Jessi]

I understand the importance behind it, but I think I died of boredom.