West Harlem/DUMBO/New York City… In celebration of the centennial of the Manhattan Bridge -- On Saturday, October 24, 2009 along Pearl, Water and Front Streets in Brooklyn, provocative images by visual artist Patrick Singh will be projected on the buttress wall of the Manhattan Bridge. Since 1997, Singh’s career has been punctuated by international exhibitions – collective and individual – along with artistic residencies throughout Europe, South America and Asia. Singh’s work is exhibited in multiple collections, including the Anne Cros Gallery in France.
His visions come to life under his brush without using models. Sudden appearances resulting from his intercultural journeys, which have impregnated him with indelible words, mental photographs, feelings of torment ….
The West Harlem Art Fund in partnership with ALSO PLUS (Lighting/Sound/Projection) and guest photographer Brenna McLaughlin are projecting Mr. Singh’s works in an interactive installation onto the Manhattan Bridge in DUMBO. There will be almost fifty images shown in this one-night outdoor exhibition. Original music will be provided by Queen Esther & the Hot Five.
The West Harlem Art Fund, Inc. (WHAF) has presented six outdoor sculptural works and three digital projections in partnership with the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation and the New York City Department of Transportation’s Urban Art Program. WHAF has also sponsored over 40 individual artist exhibitions, concerts, theatrical events and historical re-enactments.
ALSO + (Aacappella Light, Sound, Organization Plus Inc.) fills a cultural void in underserved areas of New York City. Our organization provides theater arts programs to diverse populations around the city; engages in all aspects of training in production and stage crafts; sponsors internships to children and young adults and maintains a cultural center that encourages everyone to bring the arts into everyday life.
Photographer Brenna Marie McLaughlin attended art school at the Columbia College in Chicago, Illinois. Brenna then went on to the University of Pennsylvania receiving her Master’s degree. She now is advancing her career in arts education and teaches at the Harlem School of the Arts. Originally from New Jersey, Brenna now lives in Brooklyn.
Queen Esther & The Hot Five is a collective of New York City’s finest jazz musicians that play intimate reconfigurations of rare all-American standards while creating original modern classics.
Executive Director Savona Bailey-McClain is pleased to have pulled so many talented artists and creative professionals together for this ensemble installation.
Viewing will begin at 7 p.m.
Manhattan Bridge Fast Facts
Type of bridge: Suspension
Construction started: October 1, 1901
Opened to traffic: December 31, 1909
Length of main span: 1,470 ft.
Total length of bridge including approaches: 6,855 ft.
Location: Connects Flatbush Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn with Canal Street in Chinatown
Clearance at center above mean high water: 135 ft.
Diameter of each of the four main cables: 21.25 ins.
Length of each of the four main cables: 3,224 ft.
Cost of original structure: $31,000,000
History
The Manhattan Bridge is a two-decked suspension bridge that carries automobile, subway and pedestrian traffic over the East River. It connects Flatbush Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn with Canal Street in Chinatown, Manhattan. Because it was conceived after the Brooklyn and Williamsburg Bridges, it was called Bridge No. 3 in its planning phase. The bridge is distinguished by an elaborate stone portal and plaza at its Manhattan end.
The Manhattan Bridge has had a troubled existence from its birth. Hoping to relieve the enormous traffic over the Brooklyn Bridge, Gustov Lindenthal, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Bridges, proposed a steel wire suspension bridge over the East River in 1901. When this design was rejected for aesthetic reasons, Lindenthal came back with much debated plans for another version that featured four main cables made from chains of eye-bars, not steel wire. (Eye bars are flat 10-foot lengths of nickel-steel joined at their ends by steel pins. The arrangement is similar to a bicycle chain.) The cables were to be held aloft by two thin-profile steel towers.
A new mayor who came into office in 1904 appointed a new bridge commissioner, who, in turn, opted for another design, this one by Leon Moiseeiff. The new plan, also a suspension bridge, retained Lindenthal’s thin-profile towers, but rejected the eye-bar chain in favor of steel wire. Most crucial, Moisieff’s overall design relied on an experimental new bridge engineering principle called deflection theory. This theory held that the inherent structure of suspension bridges makes them stronger than was originally supposed; consequently, they did not require massive stiffening trusses like those used, for example, on the Williamsburg Bridge. Deflection theory would not be fully perfected for decades, and as a result, the Manhattan Bridge was, essentially, underbuilt.
Compounding the problem, Moisseiff placed the subway and streetcar lines -- the streetcar tracks were replaced with auto lanes in the 1940s -- on the outer edges of the roadway. The heavy moving loads of the trains put a twisting strain on the lightly reinforced deck, resulting in unending maintenance headaches. To correct the problems for good, a long-term reconstruction of the Manhattan Bridge was begun in the 1980s that has only recently ended, in 2007.
The Manhattan Bridge originally featured two of the most impressive entranceways of any New York City bridge. A stone archway styled after the Porte St. Denis in Paris and designed by of Carrere and Hastings (the architectural firm that designed the New York Public Library building) still serves as the Manhattan-side portal. The somewhat less grand Brooklyn approach, which included two statues by Daniel Chester French – allegorical figures of Brooklyn and Manhattan – was dismantled in the 1960s to facilitate traffic movement. The statues were moved to the Brooklyn Museum.
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