Читать книгу Antiquity in Gotham - Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis - Страница 14

Since New York City’s inception, the Hudson and East Rivers have been both a blessing and a curse to the city’s development. New York Bay is a large natural harbor; ships could dock and offload goods efficiently, facilitating trade. While Manhattan became the epicenter of late nineteenth-century New York, it was still an island. For most of New York’s early history, ferries were the only way to travel to Manhattan. As Brooklyn and Manhattan expanded, their economies grew more intertwined, and the need for bridges to move people and goods between the two efficiently became unavoidable. The Brooklyn Bridge (1883) was the first to link the two sides of the East River, but the increasing numbers of daily commuters meant that soon one bridge was not enough. Because it was farther north, the Williamsburg Bridge (1903) did not do much to alleviate the traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge. Therefore, another bridge, to be called the Manhattan Bridge, was planned for just north of the Brooklyn Bridge. By 1903, the architect Henry Hornbostel had made preliminary drawings for the bridge. After a reshuffling of bridge commissioners and architects, Carrère and Hastings, the architects of the New York Public Library’s main branch, were appointed as the bridge’s architects, and it was completed in 1909.

An arch, colonnade, and plaza serve as a monumental and functional entrance and exit for the bridge’s Manhattan approach (Figure 2). The single-bay arch (36 × 40 feet) was constructed of rusticated Hallowell granite from Maine.²⁸ The arch reinterprets the form and decoration of the Porte Saint-Denis (1672) in Paris (Figure 3),²⁹ which in turn is modeled on the Arch of Titus (81–82 CE) (see Figure 94).³⁰ European architecture was often a lens through which Americans interpreted ancient architecture.³¹

The arch’s sculptural program also utilized the forms of antiquity. A highly decorated band of classical ships (with rostra, the metal beaks of Roman ships), oak leaves, dramatic classical-style masks and shields with various classical motifs, including the fasces (a bundle of wooden rods, the symbol of political power in ancient Rome), frames the arch’s single bay. A wizened American bison watches over the traffic from the keystone. Above the bay, the frieze displays an unexpected scene of Native Americans riding galloping horses, hunting bison and animals of the Great Plains, a popular theme in early-twentieth-century American art.³² Charles Cary Rumsey, a celebrated sculptor of American animals,³³ created this relief. The dynamic composition and the depiction of the horses owe a clear debt to the muscular horses in the reliefs of the Panathenaic Procession on the Parthenon (Figure 4) and to the Porte Saint-Denis, where Louis XIV appears in battle on horseback (Figure 3). Above the relief is a series of dentils and egg-and-dart motifs, surmounted by a cornice. The arch’s simple attic is decorated with six lion heads and strigil decorations, a motif found commonly on Roman sarcophagi.

FIGURE 3. Porte Saint-Denis, Paris, 2010.

Source: Coyau / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The arch’s two monumental piers are decorated with obelisks and two sculptural groups, both by Carl A. Herber. The Spirit of Industry stands proudly on the north pillar; on the south pillar is the Spirit of Commerce. After the Civil War, nude or classically attired personifications increasingly became a part of the United States’ sculptural landscape.³⁴ They were the perfect tool for an artist who needed a symbolic and malleable language to express the ideals or achievements of the United States and, in this case, New York City.

FIGURE 4. Section of the North Frieze XLIII, the Parthenon, British Museum, 2010.

Source: S. Zucker (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

The winged Spirit of Industry, wearing a flowing peplos-like garment and a wreath, proudly strides forward, arm raised (Figure 5). On the right, a nude woman stares up at her, awestruck. On the left she is flanked by a nude male holding a lever and wheel, embodying the factories and machinery of industry driving New York’s economy.³⁵ Workers would have traversed this bridge to labor in Manhattan’s factories; the goods they manufactured also crossed the bridge. Behind the sculptures, a three-tiered trophy is carved in shallow relief into the obelisk and is decorated with an eclectic mix of classical symbols and maritime motifs, which symbolize commerce and trade.

On the south pier stands the Spirit of Commerce, who with his wings and caduceus (a staff with two intertwining snakes) closely resembles Mercury, the god of commerce and travelers (Figure 6). His leg rests against a globe, which shows North and South America, alluding to the United States’ power in the Western Hemisphere. On the left, a partially nude woman holds a basket overflowing with produce, while on the right a man holds a package. The globe, agricultural bounty, and package embody the trade and commerce that drove New York’s economy. As on the north pier, the trophy above Commerce’s head is a mélange of a ship’s prow and an eagle (a symbol of the United States) along with other maritime and classical motifs. The sculptural groups communicate a compelling message about the strength and power of New York’s economy and two of its leading sectors—industry and commerce. While the subject of the bison hunt is jarring next to these classical personifications, at the time critics did not even remark on this combination. This eclecticism, a defining element of the Neo-Antique, is exemplified here: Different ideas and forms—here, Greek, Egyptian, and Roman, as mediated through a seventeenth-century French interpretation—could be combined to convey aspects of American history and mythology, such as the unconquered West and the progress of American industry and commerce.

FIGURE 5. Spirit of Industry, north pier, Manhattan Bridge, Manhattan, 2018.

Source: Author.

FIGURE 6. Spirit of Commerce, south pier, Manhattan Bridge, Manhattan, 2018.

Source: Author.

A Doric colonnade, modeled on that of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, flanks the arch;³⁶ it is likely a celebration of Bernini’s Renaissance genius rather than of Catholicism. Another precursor for this arch may be the late eighteenth-century Brandenburg Gate (itself modeled after the Propylaea of the Athenian Acropolis) in Berlin. The intercolumniations of colonnades are infilled with impassable balustrades. Set above each balustrade is a carved stone decorated with classical motifs, including a cuirass (Roman chest armor) and boats decorated with ancient motifs, rosettes, and dentils. The entablature is decorated with roundels with a simple floral pattern. In front of the arch and colonnade was a landscaped park, which, according to one contemporary account, was designed in “harmony with the central feature.”³⁷ Only two carved lions adorn the base of each pillar of the arch’s Brooklyn façade.

Since the erection of the bridge, the arch, colonnade, and plaza have helped direct vehicular and train traffic.³⁸ The arch and colonnade also aggrandize the bridge, creating an attractive terminus to the bridge’s Manhattan approach. The tension between utility and aesthetics in New York City’s major infrastructure projects remained a topic of constant debate. Scientific American criticized the unadulterated steel and the austere appearance of the Williamsburg Bridge as too functional.³⁹ By contrast, the beauty and practicality of the arch and colonnade was immediately recognized as an example of good design and cosmopolitan taste. According to the New York Times, Bridge Commissioner Arthur J. O’Keeffe opined that bridges “should be ornaments to the city, that their approaches should be as beautiful as possible.… In Europe this sort of bridge [the Manhattan Bridge] approach has received a great deal of attention, but up to the present time, with but few exceptions, has been neglected in this country.”⁴⁰ The Brooklyn Eagle agreed: “Heretofore our bridges have been just bridges and nothing more.… The Manhattan Bridge will be not only something to get across the East River upon, but the sight of it will be a joy even to those who have no occasion to cross it.”⁴¹ The approach to the Manhattan Bridge from Brooklyn was composed of a series of grand choreographed spaces, starting with a large, open plaza with balustrades and terraced parks.⁴²

The arch, colonnade, and grand plaza reflected the principles of the City Beautiful movement. This movement, one of the most important urban planning movements in the United States,⁴³ had its roots in the improvement societies founded in New England in the 1850s to make the cities of the United States the artistic and cultural peers of European cities through improved urban design, architecture, and planning. The proponents of the City Beautiful movement received a major boost by the 1893 Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago’s World Fair, and actively sought to better urban living and the character of city dwellers and the urban poor through good urban design and beautiful architecture. The journalist and author Charles Mulford Robinson was a leading advocate of the City Beautiful movement, and his 1903 work Modern Civic Art; or, The City Made Beautiful is the movement’s bible. Architects, planners, and designers tried to implement many of the movement’s ideals through the creation of city centers; New York’s Foley Square, discussed in the next chapter, is one such example.