The Manhattan Bridge will be celebrating its one hundredth birthday on New Year's Eve (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
MANHATTAN BRIDGE ARCH & COLONNADE
Bowery & Canal St.
Admission: free
www.nyc.gov
On New Year’s Eve, the underrated Manhattan Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge’s baby brother, turns one hundred. While the festivities honoring the centennial took place back in October, you might still want to pass by today and wish the bridge, which usually gets short shrift, a happy birthday while also checking out some of its very impressive architecture. The Manhattan Bridge approach on the Manhattan side is simply spectacular. Designed in the early twentieth century by Carrère & Hastings — who were trained as draftsmen at McKim, Mead & White and also designed the New York Public Library — the massive Beaux-Arts structure, which was based on the Porte St. Denis arch in Paris, towers over Chinatown, impressive in its detail. Looking out from the top is a row of six lion heads. Beneath that, a frieze features four Native Americans tracking down buffalo; on either side of the frieze are pyramids of coats of arms spreading out into two magnificent sculptures. On the south side, Winged Mercury, standing atop a globe, holds a caduceus, a topless Native American woman to his right, a pilgrim with a bundle on his left. On the north side Winged Victory lifts out her arm, also flanked by a man and a woman. At the peak of the rounded arch itself, a buffalo head looks down Canal St. The colonnade contains seven columns on each side, with more coats of arms and images with various fish. The other side of the arch, facing Brooklyn, is much simpler, though it is guarded on each side by a lion with its paw placed firmly on a globe. The suspension bridge itself, which opened to traffic on December 31, 1909, measures 6,855 feet long and cost $30 million. Happy birthday!